Footnote To A Clean Kill

"I seem to have a history of missing the point of this stuff. Apparently, very absent-mindedly, I care, but never enough for you."

Heads up, kittens. I know, I know...a week and a half with no postage at all is a rarity in this particular corner of the internet. The sad fact of the matter is that free time isn't a commodity I'm doing much dealing in at this stage of the game. Certainly not to the extent where I can sit down and write lengthy musings on whatever springs to mind. But we've got a couple of days before I once again soar off into the wild blue yonder on what promises to be another strange trip to the other side of the Atlantic, so let's see if we can't do something with them.

Once again, my political cynicism has come back to haunt me. I was planning on doing a post about the upcoming General Election earlier in the week. Given the events of the last couple of days, though, I'm glad I held off. Wednesday saw the first, last, and only meaningful shot of this sad little campaign fired in the form of a publicity stunt that was, in my humble opinion, a stroke of genius. It came from my favourite tabloid, The Sun, and saw red smoke billow from a chimney of the paper's headquarters as it finally stopped flirting with Michael Howard's mildly rejuvenated Conservative party and sat itself firmly in Mr. Blair's corner for the third and final time. Make no mistake about it, the result of this election was never in doubt, but any murmurs of a possible Tory resurgence were silenced by what was, in terms of derailing Howard's attempt to hit New Labour where it hurts, a clean kill.

It strikes me now that Rupert Murdoch's obvious and slightly surprising swing towards the men in blue these last few months was little more than a reminder to Mr. Blair and his friends just what kind of sway News Corporation still has, even with a mostly disinterested electorate. "Fuck with us, little man," he was saying, "and your entry in the history books will have a final page detailing just how badly you blew it when the going got tough." For Blair - with a third term and then glorious retirement as an undefeated, era-defining Prime Minister almost certain - this was clearly worrying. Far from coming out swinging against a ludicrous Tory campaign built on exactly the issues that have been selling News Corporation's papers these last few years, the Labour camp was ominously silent. Sure, nobody thought the Conservatives really had a chance of upending the overwhelming odds they're facing, but whispers can be damaging, and even a small comeback would be seen in many quarters as a victory for Howard. The man clearly isn't a fool, and until Thursday's papers hit the stands, his subtlety-free campaign was looking less like a doomed leader desperately trying to smear the opposition and more like a smart man throwing a net over that section of the electorate that matters the most when the deal goes down.

I know a few of you are mocking that last sentence, and I know many of you are aware of the derisision heaped upon the Conservative campaign posters that have largely been viewed as a cataclysmic graffiti magnet. For those people, I have but one simple question: How many of the Labour posters used in the run-up to this election can you remember? No publicity is bad publicity.

But, man, I was in awe of The Sun's little stunt. It was a powerful, topical image that touched on a recent event close to a lot of hearts. It got the paper attention from most of the major media outlets (even those that don't have the same owner) while at the same time placing Tony and cronies firmly back in the driver's seat. Michael Howard's proclamations seem little more than whimpers now, and this election is looking, for the Tories, like another very public flogging.

No predictions, then. New Labour had it in the bag. The events of this week mean merely that they can tie the string that little bit sooner. This could, potentially, be worse than '97 for the Tories. Tony strutted out of his corner yesterday like a man smelling blood. With the solid brass balls that are the only thing I have ever admired about the guy, he calmly took apart the Conservative campaign by addressing those issues - crime and immigration - that just a week ago appeared to be rocking the very foundations of his campaign, even referencing those infamous Tory billboards in the process. Tony was and is riding high. His place in history will not be denied.

As for me, you may recall me mentioning my disinterest some time ago. My feelings haven't changed. While I'm anything but apathetic or apolitical, the utter blandness of the current climate leaves me no choice but to be a detached and cynical observer. As Richard Littlejohn (of all people) pointed out last week, the problem with the Conservatives right now is that they're still dealing with the events of 1997. They're afraid to come right out and say that they're the party of low tax and a free market. Instead, they sidle up to the centrist policies that blew them out of the water so comprehensively eight years ago and quietly agree with them while jumping on headline-grabbing issues like immigration and hoping that Blair and co. fuck up enough for it to be worth something. What you end up with, especially in the aftermath of the red smoke and the brass balls speech, is a two party system where both parties stand for the exact same thing. One is the acceptable if not remarkable devil you know, and one is the devil that bit you in the arse and then chewed for eighteen straight years, leaving a wound that simply will not heal if the Tories do nothing but smile nervously and pretend they're exactly like New Labour only without the stuff News Corporation doesn't like.

I don't support the Tories, and I never could, but I do wish they'd get their fucking act together. This drift toward the centre has made the entire concept of British Democracy dangerously stagnant. As the recent US election proved, polarisation = voter turnout. Even if the result wasn't what a lot of people I talk to wanted, the fact that George W. Bush is a polarising figure cannot be denied. It was the reaction to his administration that lead to the largest number of people voting in a Presidential Election for 36 years, which is healthy for Democracy regardless of the result. Here in England, though, we have no hope of such numbers heading for the polling stations on May 5th. In fact, if I'm not going to bother predicting an astoundingly obvious result, I will take a stroll out on a limb and say that I think the turnout for the 2005 General election will be the lowest in British Electoral history. If that happens, there's no doubt that it'll make a few headlines and keep a few broadsheet columnists in material for a few weeks. But in terms of the real story of this drab, empty election - Blair's ascension into the ranks of Britain's greatest Prime Ministers - it's merely a footnote. And I have to tell you, that scares me a little. Where do we go from here?

Tired Ideas And Meaningless Debate

"My concern with accuracy is on a higher level than nickels and dimes."

An anonymous e-mail took issue with a post in which I may have inferred that the Pope was a bigot. Which is fair enough, I suppose. After all, I'm not seeing too many homosexuals in the rush to have the guy sainted. That said, when you're the Pope, it kinda comes with the territory. There isn't much call for guides who want to take the path less travelled in the Vatican.

That's a belief, by the way, defined as a mental acceptance of truth. It isn't the same as truth, which is verifiable and inarguable. In all honesty, I don't care very much about the Pope and have little interest in writing on the subject, I just wanted to point out that two opposing beliefs being in existence at the same time is a perfectly natural and sane thing to have occurred and does not, in any way, mean anybody has to get massively offended and write barely literate letters to anybody else. We can have a sane and rational debate about it, if anyone's inclined. If people want to get hysterical, well, my side of the debate has only two words.

Clue: One of them's 'off'.

I could do a lot of social and political commentary on the blog, I really could. It's not as though I'm not that way inclined, and it's not as though we couldn't get a debate going. The problem, as I see it, is that I don't want NFADR to be one of those sites where all the "liberals" and the "fundamentalists" and whatever else people call themselves when they gather in large groups and forget how to think independently get together and have a big fight because what drives them isn't a desire to see a better world but another opportunity to say "Christians are pooheads" or "The Bible says liberals are pooheads" or whatever. I mean, all well and good if that's what makes you happy, but please stop pretending like you're fighting for some greater good when what you're really doing is looking for some ill-defined evil that validates belief systems you have no confidence in. It's old, it's dull, and I really think it's about time we moved on to some new ideas.

Here's one: Nobody's going to win. I appreciate that this may come as a shock to some of you, but I'm afraid it's completely true. Nobody is going to win. Not liberals, not libertarians, not muslims, not catholics, not communists, not black, white, male, female, gay, straight, believer, or non believer. Nobody Is Going To Win. Absorbed that? Good. I know it probably seems a naive idea to those of you that consider yourselves thinkers, but I'm concerning myself with higher truths here. If you think I give a fuck that you can quote Nietszche or Chomsky, you're on the wrong page, and should probably go find somebody who's impressed that you can copy text out of a book and then misuse it to score points.

Shit, they say cricket's dull because it can go on for five days and still end in a draw. If that's the case, how are we supposed to feel about arguments that have been going on for hundreds of years and are still no closer to an impossible consensus? Now, I know someone's going to say, "but Michael, discussion and debate are important ways to broaden our minds. Through these mediums, we can all grow and learn as individuals and a society." That's all well and good, and when I stop laughing, I will give you my number. When you come up with an angle I have never heard before, call me and we'll start the revolution. Until then, please don't be too offended if I choose to sit in my room and write fuck-stories. I am enlightened, and I know that there aren't any new ideas, just repackaged ones.

So I say God is dead, and I say Democracy is dead, and I say your thoughts and ideas belong to an age that has passed. That we, as a race, have failed to notice that fact is what makes this the era of tired ideas and meaningless debate, where most thought is inspired by the television and most people are more concerned with opposing things than actually trying to make any kind of difference.

Of course, those are just my beliefs...

An Anthropological Enema

"Are you taking over or are you taking orders? Are you going backwards or are you going forwards?"

It's been a long time since I was up at five in the morning for anything, never mind work. I've always made a point of believing that sunrises are wasted on those that have just woken up. Wednesday was no exception to this, so when my phone brought me to consciousness by very suddenly playing Ride Of The Valkyries after little more than four hours sleep, I was sorely tempted to throw it across the room and return to the womblike warmth beneath my blankets. Sadly, common sense and a desire to keep my job prevailed, and I was soon standing in unseasonably freezing conditions at the bus stop, where vandals had put paid to any chance of sheltering from the arctic wind by smashing all the windows for what must be the fifth or sixth time this year. I don't care about the long running battle between the wankers who have nothing better to do and the wankers we apparently elect to run the town, but I do care about having numb fingers. Mornings like Wednesday, I wish they'd stop merely replacing the broken windows and make anti-social behaviour a capital crime. That way, many monosyllabic fucking idiots in hoodies would be given the lethal injection before popular outrage turned to revolution and the council were overthrown to cries of, "What do we want? NO MORE SPEED-BUMPS! When do we want it? NOW!"

Many birds with a single stone.

Once on the mighty 107 to Barnet, I slumped into the first empty seat and glanced back at my travelling companions. These, clearly, were the Morning People. Defined by bad posture and bags beneath the eyes given definition by their ghostly pallor, they were slumped in symmetrical formation all the way to the back of the bus. If people can avoid sitting next to other people on public transport, they will, and I had chanced upon a vehicle where every double seat housed one person and nobody was left standing. It was as perfect a declaration of this pointless suburban existence as you're likely to find.

In the city, public transport is a convenience for everybody. At the best of times, a pedestrian can beat a car in a straight race from one point in the centre of London to another. At the worst, he or she would have time for coffee, a sandwich, and a browse through today's paper before their frustrated opponent showed up. The tube is dirty and crowded, but it's quick, and the buses have the advantage of using their own lanes. As the 107 made steady progress along the winding road through Arkley, I reflected that the inhabitants of the huge houses going by on either side, with their massive driveways and shiny sportscars, never use the buses. Here on the fringes, public transport is for the poor.

I took another look back towards the rear of the bus, staring at the commuters without making eye contact. Their clothes were as drab and rumpled as their faces. Sitting there in my old leather coat and my scuffed shoes, my eyes kept open only by the curiosities fuelling my internal monologue, I realised I was not an outsider.

The 107 is not, generally speaking, a good subject for anthropological study. But there are patterns and curiosities in any forced gathering of people, no matter how small. Take Borehamwood, my home town, as an example. I got an e-mail from Charlie Williams last night. He'd surfed his way here from Ray's page and wanted to mention that he'd once lived very near here and had spent time in the town. Without really thinking about it, I replied with my usual opinion on this particular part of Hertfordshire, to which Charlie responded by pointing out the fairly unique and interesting history of Borehamwood, particularly its ties to the TV and film industries. That got me thinking about how I have very little in the way of good things to say about where I live, and I suddenly felt like writing about why.

Yes, Borehamwood does have a storied history. At one time, it was known as The British Hollywood, and between the forties and the eighties, the studios here played host to a cavalcade of actors and directors that are now household names. However, that era peaked in the sixties and essentially died in the seventies, spiking again only for the original Star Wars trilogy and The Shining before the influence of the studios went into decline and finally faded altogether. Since then, the local council has purchased the properties concerned and they've been primarily used for television. These days, Borehamwood is famous for three things: Eastenders, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and Big Brother. Without wanting to be too much of a cultural snob, it's hardly Kubrick and Hitchcock, is it?

Borehamwood in 2005 is on the upswing in terms of the amount of money being invested in the area. But for the last ten years or so, it's been the victim of a kind of cultural drift. With prices rising in the city, the disenfranchised tend to migrate to the suburbs. Without the benefit of any learned texts or figures, the way I see it is as a kind of ring around London made up of communities in decline due to a rapid population growth made up mostly of immigrants and the working class. I'm aware that the latter is no longer a popular name, but it's not like that class has simply ceased to exist just because the terminology has become unfashionable. The presence of these groups causes a rise in crime and a drop in property prices, which serves to increase the influx of short-distance migrants and exacerbate the symptoms of the decline, and so on. Over time, the commercial make-up of the area changes to meet the needs of fresh demographics. In five or ten years, you have a town that looks very different to the way it used to.

Of course, these changes don't go unnoticed and without argument. Though some of the residents present when the migrants began to arrive will undoubtedly have moved on, a large percentage will still be living there, and they will not be happy. Furious of Borehamwood will be writing many letters to the local paper and the council, and issues of crime and particularly anti-social behaviour will top the local political agenda. The council will announce a programme of improvements, a heavier police presence will make itself felt, and things will begin to change. Like unwelcome visitors, the migrants (and at this point it's almost a new generation) will be forced further outward by the reversal of the very factors that brought them to the town. Urban renewal becomes more obvious, and certain businesses, sensing fresh gaps in the market, will begin to move in. For the town, the circle beings to close. For the migrants, it's a case of being pushed further and further out of the city, establishing new boundaries for suburban nowhere and essentially expanding London's borders yet further.

That may all be bollocks, but I hope it was at least an interesting read.

Now, a few things I need to clear up: I consider myself working class. I come from a broken home and grew up with my parents and money being the two notable absences from my life. When I was a kid, we fucking struggled. Just because I can string a sentence together and have a healthy level of disdain for some of the behaviour I see in the place where I live, doesn't mean I don't remember where I'm from. It means that I fail to see the point in celebrating moronic behaviour like it's something to be proud of. I don't care if you're from Sloane Square or the heart of Brixton, if it looks like a wanker and talks like a wanker, it's a wanker. My days of believing hope lay in the proles are long gone, and someone being from the same background as me does not necessarily make them one of mine. To pretend comradery with those you can't even begin to relate to is, for me, ridiculous.

So...I hate this town. I hate it for a wide variety of personal reasons I've mentioned many times before on this page. But I also hate it because I really don't enjoy walking down a high street that is wall to wall dickheads. I'm not going to jump on the 'chav' thing again, but the uniform of the local female is denim microskirt, tight top, ridiculous hoop earrings, and fucking burberry handbag. The mobile phone with some bastarding bleepy techno ringtone is a given. The male of the species drives an off-white L-reg Cavalier with a stereo system that cost more than the car and pumps out earth-shaking bass as though volume were an indication of status. He and his friends will almost certainly be wearing some form of hooded tracksuit along with a cap. As they drive down the high street with the windows wound down, they will undoubtedly be shouting really obvious and unfunny insults designed to make the kind of girl you pick up outside fucking McDonalds laugh.

As mentioned above, when the town you live in is largely made up of brain-shy fuckwits, the commercial sector caters accordingly. Thus, Borehamwood is made up of crap pubs, cut-price fried chicken outlets, kebab shops, 50p-£1 shops, and the kind of jewellers that frown when you want anything other than a big shiny chain.

If a tourist was to venture beyond the town centre, they would find a veritable army of grey, sixties tower blocks, in the shadows of which yet more betracksuited scum skulk, forever on the lookout for phone boxes to smash or passers-by to glare at. If said tourists did not have on their person some form of heavy weaponry, they would likely run like hell for the broken and graffiti'd "safety" of the train station, where they could hide in waiting rooms that stink of piss from teenagers drunk on cheap cider.

Yeah, you could say I dislike this town. In fact, were I to - anthropologically speaking - give England an enema, I'd stick the hose right here. Make of that what you will.

Itchy Trigger Finger

"I used to long for time alone. I used to long for a place of my own, and I'm losing faith in everything. I'm lost, so lost. I'm lost at sea, you'll see."

I should be in bed. I have to be up at quarter past five in the morning to go to Barnet and shoot about a million barcodes with a gun that bleeps. There are many things I would rather be doing - like, say, taking a cheese grater to my testicles - but work is work, and my rota says 'stock take'.

Today was full of glorious nothing. I got up at about eleven and vegetated on the couch for a while before taking a bath and finishing The Big Blind, the debut novel from Ray Banks, whom you can find linked from this very page. Without wishing to appear massively biased towards Senor Banquitez, a gentleman I have been acquainted with for some years, he does appear to have written a sinister little bastard of a book that will grab you firmly by the scruff of the neck and squeeze. Hard. Having taken this all-too-brief tour through the more squalid parts of both Manchester and the heads of some really unpleasant people, I have no hesitation in issuing a hearty recommendation. The characters that inhabit The Big Blind won't grab your sympathy, but they'll have your attention until the tale is told. And empathy? Well, you'd never admit to it, would you?

Next up was weird Australian sci-fi/horror/comedy flick Undead. With a tip of the hat to the early efforts of Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson, the brothers Spierig have concocted a tale that centers around a beauty queen, a nutcase, two cops (one a psycho, the other terrified), and a pilot with his pregnant girlfriend in tow. This strange group find themselves holed up in an old house when a meteor shower turns the whole town into zombies. Deciding to fight their way out, they find the undead are the least of their worries, as a group of mysterious hooded aliens start abducting the locals.

Not a bad movie, but not a particularly good one either, Undead is a classic example of a film that doesn't know what it wants to be. While the make-up, special effects, and basic story are all strong, the comedy elements of the movie are painfully unfunny at times. Playing it for laughs is all well and good, but what the Spierigs have essentially done here is undermined what could have been a quirky sci-fi film with a lot of laughs that didn't come from forced lines or poor characters. The film is still a fairly enjoyable romp, and it makes a lot more sense than some of the reviews I've read suggest, but I think these guys can and will do better. I'll be interested to see their next film.

After that, I watched Office Space and The Usual Suspects. I'm pretty sure most of you will have seen both of those already, so I'll leave the reviews by the wayside. If you haven't, well, you should.

And here I am. I woke up this morning knowing I had an empty day, but with absolutely no inclination to sit down at the keyboard and do some work. I've struggled over the weird psychic hurdle that was preventing me from writing, but I'm still finding it difficult to motivate myself sometimes. My life is pretty much chaos right now, and it's hard to focus on a task as daunting as writing a novel. However things pan out, I know that wherever I am six months from now, it's looking less and less likely to be here. I'll be able to write this thing wherever I am, but these stories have very strong ties to the last couple of years, and I don't want to lose sight of that before I'm finished. A lot has changed and a lot more is changing, but I want to show what I see, not pick up the pieces of things that happened once.

Right on cue, it starts raining. The weather is getting warmer, and these April showers remind me of last summer's storms and all the baggage I carried through them. More and more lately, I find myself wondering if the light I see at the end of the tunnel will ever become a reality. Someday soon I'll be waking up in a new place surrounded by new people. I wonder if I'll feel the same, if I'll still have these headaches that tell me when the sky's getting ready to burst, if a window open on a wet spring night will always make me crave a cigarette.

I could sit here and speculate until dawn, and I still won't know anything until it's no longer the future. I dream, though. All the time I dream. I like the Darkened Room, and I owe it plenty, but it's time to move on. Nobody should be alone so often for so long.

Anyhow, the bleeping gun awaits my itchy trigger finger, so I'd better get myself off to bed before I'm left with no time to sleep at all. Tomorrow is another step on a road that's getting shorter all the time. If that isn't an optimistic thought, I don't know what is.

Album Review: Blinking Lights And Other Revelations - Eels

"Trouble with dreams is you never know when to hold on and when to let go."

The Eels have always been an acquired taste. While their debut album, Beautiful Freak, certainly troubled the charts and acquired them a healthy fanbase (with catchy single Novocaine For The Soul particularly successful), the follow-up (1998's Electro-Shock Blues) was far darker and less accessible, as head Eel Mark Everett dealt with the deaths of both his mother and sister. Then came Daisies Of The Galaxy, a strangely chirpy jaunt into acoustic weirdness that still managed to be home to hit single Mr E's Beautiful Blues (a track that has since found its way into about a million films). With a burgeoning reputation as an unco-operative, distinctly non-commercial outfit, the Eels felt confident enough to chase this with 2001's Souljacker, their hardest album to date. Since then, Everett and co. have been hard at work on Blinking Lights And Other Revelations, taking a brief time out in 2003 to throw together Shootenanny, which - considering it was recorded in ten days - is an extremely strong album.

But trust me, it's nothing compared to this. Out April 26th (I have what you might call an advance copy, but I'll be buying the proper album as soon as it's in stores), Blinking Lights And Other Revelations is, quite simply, the sound of an exceptional band hitting their peak. A double album at this stage of the game could be considered a risky move, with accusations of self-indulgence and egotism never far from such an exercise, but Everett (the main creative force behind the band) has done himself proud here, turning in a record made up of 34 tracks and only slightly over ninety minutes in length. Yes, it's longer and more epic in scope than your average album, but with such beautifully crafted stories to be told and no filler in sight, the listener's extra investment is more than justified.

Disc 1 kicks off with Theme From Blinking Lights, introducing us to a recurring tune and theme of the album, particularly this disc. "There are two kinds of Christmas people," says Everett, on the Eels official site, "those who like their Christmas lights to stay on solid and those who like them to blink. As a kid, I always had a thing for sitting in the dark and watching the lights blink on and off at random." Disc 1, it seems to me, is very much about childhood, nostalgia, and growing up. From Everett's melancholy memories of his parents (Son Of A Bitch) to the wonderfully manic and fucked-up introduction to the Real World that is Going Fetal, via the grin-inducing teenaged optimism of Trouble With Dreams, there is something ethereal and almost innocent about this opening salvo. Almost all of the songs are less than three minutes long, and the constant mixing of genre and tempo that has always been an Eels trademark seems here to reinforce that sense of childish playfulness giving way to the powerful emotion of puberty. This isn't a concept album, but it could be.

The second disc is slicker and contains far more tracks that could potentially be singles. Of course, given the band we're dealing with, they've gone with one of the most strangely catchy songs I've heard in a while (Hey Man (Now You're Really Living), sort of a companion piece to Going Fetal) as the first release, but there you go. If I was comparing them as separate albums, I'd say disc 2 was more coherent but disc 1 much more interesting. Of course, together they are greater than the sum of their parts, and the second disc comes across as an extension and expansion of the first, looking beyond the childhood world towards God, love, and a more mature approach to death. Again, the songs are brief and strong, each track a powerful statement in its own right and a part of the larger picture. The only time this pattern is broken is with the closer, Things The Grandchildren Should Know, and as it's almost a summary of all that has come before and an expression of honesty, optimism, and hope, this seems only right and proper.

As Everett says, expanding on the Blinking Lights theme, "In the end, what we have are these little, great moments. They come and they go. That's as good as it gets. But still, isn't that great?"

Yes, and so is this album. You really should own it.

10/10

The 'Before' Guy In A Ventolin Ad

"I don't know what it is they're trying to do to me, make me into some sick joke. But no one's laughing, and least of all not me. It's hard to laugh as you choke."

What the hell do you post about when Home Entertainment takes over your life and you don't particularly want to write about your job? It's not that bad, as jobs go, but it's not like I'm saving lives or meeting interesting new people or embezzling thousands of pounds or anything fun like that. I'm just training to be a manager. Silly, when you think about it. I mean, I've BEEN a manager, and it's a position that doesn't change much from company to company. You have a key, you don't have to make the coffee, and the customer is no longer necessarily always right. Whoop-dee-doo.

I don't know, maybe I'll write a post about the jobs I've had and the various highlights I've experienced. I haven't really gone there yet, and it could be fun. For me, I mean. It's not like I write this thing for you people. It'd just be another opportunity for me to look back at my life and go, "Oh hey, remember when I said that? Goddamn, I'm funny."

In other news, I have a really nasty cough of the variety where every time I breathe out it sounds as though there are fragments of lung bouncing merrily around in my ribcage. In addition to this, my new tattoo is now in the crinkly, peeling stage. It looks quite fantastically disgusting, and my work uniform has short sleeves. Yes, I now serve the public with a voice like the 'Before' guy in a Ventolin advert and dried up pieces of my skin drifting to the carpet like dirty snowflakes. It's a beautiful thing.

Oh, and I got the new Eels and Alkaline Trio albums by nefarious means. I shall post reviews in the near future. The Alkaline Trio album is...meh, maybe it's a grower. The Eels album, on the other hand, is fucking amazing.

And that's it. There is a big fat bastard of a piece of news lurking behind these rather mundane posts, but I'm afraid you're gonna have to wait awhile before I tell you about it. Muhahaha.

Unsung

"Look at all the people with their heads down in their hands, when everything I’m feeling makes it hard to understand that what I need to miss, it’s what I need to miss, it's you."

Now that Jennifer has departed for sunnier climes, and I'm feeling somewhat cold and lonely here in The Darkened Room, I think we need a change of pitch. You see, I've had one eye on the news for most of this week, and I've been watching with no little interest as the twin sagas of Terry Schiavo and Pope John Paul II have drawn to a conclusion. And to be honest, each passing day has left me wondering what extremes our callous disregard for human life can possibly reach.

No, I'm not talking about Terry Schiavo's life. Not knowing the scientific facts of her condition, I - like everybody else involved in this numbing 'right to life' debate - am in no position to pass comment. But personally, I'm of the belief that if someone does not want to live, then that is their choice, and the business of any court in any land should be to uphold that right. Of course, that's just a personal opinion. But for the record, and so it's down in black and white, if anything should ever happen to leave me in a condition anything like the state that poor woman was in, I want to be allowed to die.

I'm not talking about John Paul II's life, either. He's had a good innings, and it's always nice to see the world's media taking to talk of love and compassion with nary a whisper of hate and bigotry. After all, this is the man that was brave enough to apologise for the past wrongs of the Roman Catholic church. That he did this shortly before ensuring that homosexuals would remain ostracised and demonised by the fine organisation he is the titular head of is, of course, neither here nor there. After all, when it comes to prejudice, there's a very definite pecking order, and any social grouping worth its salt needs folk devils.

So no, we're not here to talk about the callous disregard for the brain-damaged young woman or the old man in the final hours of a life in which he was respected, loved, and worshipped. Instead, we're here to ask a question, and that question is this:

"In terms of the amount of money, effort, and media coverage that has gone into bringing us the stories of a woman who almost certainly wanted to die and a man who is dying peacefully and in luxury of ailments bought on by old age, how many unnecessary deaths could we, as a race, have prevented this week?"

Answers wherever the fuck you like, it won't make the blindest bit of difference.