The Ranting Room

St.Cleve Chronicle wrote: OK, this is supposed to be a fun thread, but I just have to say something very serious CIGARETTES SHOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN INVENTED I have several friends at school who smoke, and for what I know they all wish they would never have started. And so do I. I am very, very sad that so clever and so nice people have started to do something so stupid and so destructive. From many of them you could never guess. The previous revelation was today, when I found out that a really nice guy with a great taste of music is doing the previously mentioned thing. (well, he really likes the recordings I have made consisting of prog covers and a bit of my own material. Don't want this kind of habits to any of my few fans). I suppose we are all aware of the... ehm... nasty effects of smoking. So, nothing about them, but here's a quickly written anti-smoking anthem. Sing to the heavy melody of Gentle Giant's Peel the paint with Peter Hammil-in-Man-Erg-middle-section-like voice: (Don't know) How often you go to the house with the cross but too soon you will - in a wooden box You still have time To save yourself Keep your senses sharp, breathing clean air Cyanide and tar inside your lungs is nothing I would call healthy (etc.)

Edited by el dingo - May 27 2009 at 14:44

Chipper People, do we need them?

Call me a grumpy old Hector if you like but shouldn't serial abusers of those two promiscuous adjectives re 'gothic' and 'surreal' be frogmarched into a field and beaten until they beg for forgiveness ? That's the sort of reality TV I'm in the market for
ANYTHING that is tenuously unusual or not bleedin obvious gets dubbed surreal - humour, art, music, movies, literature, cartoons, cornflakes ads, Garfield gardening gloves, fetish haberdashery etc (might need a raincheck on the last one ?)
ANYTHING that does not directly involve puppy dogs, pink bunnies, fart jokes, the Bay City Rollers, Romantic Comedies or crying your grasping little heart out on daytime TV is designated as 'gothic/dark by the terminally cheerful in our midst.

As the NME's Ian Penman once remarked - TV is the glass teat in the corner of the room

I think I should lie down now....

^Exactly.

Looking at my message now, after a couple of months it looks like I was really angry when writing it. Perhaps rightfully.

I have never smoked myself (and I never will), but I really hate to see other people destroy their health like that.

New rant:

Is anyone else as sickened as I am about the the Fiona Pilkington case in the UK?

The single mother of a disabled girl suffered years of abuse and harassment at the hands of a local youth gang. She had reported the abuse to the police no less than 33 times, and no action was ever taken. The council also did nothing, despite her attempts to rouse them from their ignorant slumber. Miss Pilkingtons mental state went down hill rapidly, until she finally could take no more, and took her own life and that of her daughter, by setting light to her car, with both of them in it.

Yes, she shouldn't have done that, but hey you know what, some people have severe mental problems, which are exacerbated by the circumstances they find themselves in. If the appropriate authorities had done their f***ing jobs properly this could have been avoided.

Here's the problem. They are not allowed to do their jobs properly because current legislation effectively decriminises anti social behavior in the UK. The authorities can do little more than issue ASBO's (anti social behvaiour orders) which, for many youths are worn as a badge of honour. The government and the police wish to avoid criminilising kids, and have admitted as much. They dont think it helps them in the long run..blah blah whatever.. In the case of this unfortunate women, the gang, sometimes 16 strong, would assemble outside her house throwing stones and eggs, and taunting her, saying that they could do whatever they liked, and no one could touch them. They were right.

This country is absolutely f***ed! When the liberal lobby tell you just how important it is to respect the rights and needs of those who sh*t on the rest of us, just remember, that none of those policy makers live in areas affected by any of these problems. They are disasterously and hopelessly out of touch with reality. Exactly what qualifies them to have their cretinous opinions, I've no idea. F**k em!

Ultimately everything is driven by cost and other resources. Fiona Pilkington was told that no one was available to to come to her aid, every time she reported the problems. In the UK, the government likes to dress everything up in what appears to be 'good intentions' In the case of youth crime, they say they dont like locking up kids, because it serves no long term purpose, and they prefer different approaches that can be applied in the community. This traslates as 'cheaper' and demonstrably less effective approaches.

Effective governemt would aggressively challenge gang culture, and anti social behaviour in our country, and surgically remove these types from communities. Ineffective government passes legislation that allows these types to ride rough shod over the rest of us.

I don't know where this so-called liberal approach to antisocial behaviour has come from, or how people with that philosophy have risen to policy-making positions within local government, police force and social services. It certainly seems to fly in the face of commonsense, and even though I can follow the logical thought processes that see borstal and youth detention as just a training school for harder criminal activity and later graduation to adult prison, I cannot see for the life of me how the alternatives are in anyway designed to stop the such behaviour - for example I can't see how spending a pleasant afternoon collecting litter from the side of the road in anyway constitutes a punishment or a deterrent.

^ of course that "flat in Islington" is another symptom - the elevation of an inner-city area to middle-class status driving the original working class inhabitants further into poorer areas, dividing and segregating inner cities. Perhaps that's the explanation - Ms/Mr 'Flat In Islington' on a guilt-trip.

JJLehto wrote: Language is ridiculous. I wonder how exactly we just started assigning grunts to certain things, and designating squiggles and lines to represent them. Likewise, how did so many pop up! OK, I'm  burnt out from all this German HW I've had to do. But interesting/slightly annoying point none the less? I'm going on little sleep, maybe this made no sense at all...

Language is annoyingly ambiguous, and the written word doubly so, but it is a step-up from the alternative, which generally involved hitting each other with a great big sticks until the weaker combatant submitted or died.

Epignosis wrote: Dean wrote: JJLehto wrote: Language is ridiculous. I wonder how exactly we just started assigning grunts to certain things, and designating squiggles and lines to represent them. Likewise, how did so many pop up! OK, I'm  burnt out from all this German HW I've had to do. But interesting/slightly annoying point none the less? I'm going on little sleep, maybe this made no sense at all... Language is annoyingly ambiguous, and the written word doubly so, but it is a step-up from the alternative, which generally involved hitting each other with a great big sticks until the weaker combatant submitted or died. Hell, Dean, that's still our method in this house.  We've evolved from sticks to crock pots and coat hangers though.