NO OFFENCE

Well, this is the sort of thing that happens when you’ve got out of the habit of doing something and then you return to it; You can forget the kinds of things that it’s okay to talk about, and what is the sort of thing that’s best avoided.

There is an argument that goes along the lines of “Getting offended is a choice, and if you choose to get offended, then that’s your choice” but some people never can really get their heads around that one.

Equally, getting offended because you have an opinion different to someone else, and choosing to become offended because they state it is really nobody else’s fault but your own. After all, if you make the choice to read something, and then decide to become offended by it does make the reader, in part at least, culpable.

If you didn’t think you’d like what was being said, maybe you ought not to have read it.

Some might argue that not writing something would avoid the whole issue, but if we only “allow” certain points of view to be heard and not others, we’ve crossed a line that none of us should find acceptable in a so-called “free” society.

It’s rather like the days of Mary Whitehouse and the Viewers and Listeners Association choosing to watch a TV show that they know would contain something that they would not like, and then complaining about it afterwards as if they were the only people capable of having a reasoned and acceptable opinion upon it.

Ah well…

So anyway, this return to the weird world of having opinions is a minefield, and it’s fraught with hidden dangers. Granted, it’s in nobody’s interest for anyone to go out of their way to be deliberately offensive, or to preach words of hatred, but surely open and fair discussion and debate, and people having different opinions on a wide range of subjects is what free speech should be all about.

Of course, there are those who go out of their way to be offended, and these are the people for whom things like the internet, Twitter and Facebook are something of a godsend.

After all, where better to express your moral outrage and disgust about the slightest little thing?

Or at least, and this is the important distinction, to be seen to be outraged and disgusted by your peers about something that might otherwise have slipped by unremarkably and unremarked upon until someone decided that this was "terrible" and someone capable of taking the moral high ground should make an issue of it.

Of course, the fact that they might otherwise have found it "funny" if their mate said it in the pub, or that they might even have thought or even said the same thing themselves in different circumstances, is quietly glossed over if someone who has "got above themselves" can be taken to task or brought down a peg or three by such outrage, and maybe forced to apologise.

We live, however, in an era where the "public apology" has become so commonplace that it's almost as if such moments have already been structured into whatever marketing strategy that the day's news agenda has in mind for it, and often for things that actually wouldn't seem that bad if "people" didn't keep taking it upon themselves to become offended on everyone else's behalf all of the time.

So, I guess that I’ll just be shutting up again now, for a while at least, which will allow the critics and those who don’t like to hear other points of view to win another battle, even though I find that I do hope that they’ll go away and really think about what it is that they’ve done.

RELIGION AND POLITICS

Religion and politics are two topics best avoided at dinner parties, they have been known to say, and, by extension, they are probably best avoided full stop if you don’t want to get into any real trouble on the old interweb.

After all, we are now living in times where bloggers holding a different point of view from one that is deemed “acceptable” by some groups can be murdered in the streets, or having an alternative position upon faith can get your head lopped off in a manner that does seem uncivilized to those of us living a modern “western” lifestyle, but is, unfortunately little different to what our own leaders were doing scant few centuries ago as we forged what we hoped what would turn out to be a more tolerant society in the crucible of history.

“Plus ca change”, and so forth.

Setting all of that aside, I do have to hold up my hands and mention that I no longer consider myself to be a “person of faith” despite the very best efforts of my parents when I was younger. I was, for my pains, brought up to be a member of the Methodist Church, a form of faith that has now joined the ranks of some of the other religions already tainted by the stain of child abuse.

Not, I must add, that I had any experiences of that sort during my own dealings with that church, which I personally found to generally be chock-full of lovely, caring, and mostly tolerant people, give or take the odd zealot.

Any abuses that I may have endured happened in places other than that.

However, as a lapsed believer, I did get to suffer and endured long years of my mother starting sentences with the phrase “As a Christian” which was supposed to imply some sort of “better than you” superiority I fear, although that always kind of befuddles me.

After all, presumably all of those people doing the wicked things to children also considered themselves to be “Good Christians”, too, and were probably thought of as such by their fellow members of their congregations.

Unfortunately it just seems that the trust that the notion carried with it was always enough for other parents to let their children feel “safe” with these creatures, and anyone who does have such proclivities would always use whatever means possible to get themselves into a position where they could be left alone with the children they desired to abuse, which might just include appearing to be a “good” person.

As far as my mother was concerned, seeing a “Christian fish” symbol on an advert made her vulnerable as she took it as a guarantee that the people providing whatever service that they were would, naturally, be decent, honest people which was, sadly, not always the case…

A few months ago, a certain Mr Stephen Fry, a noted atheist, got into all sorts of trouble for an answer he gave to a questioner who asked him what he would say if and when he came face-to-face with God after he had died. In this answer, Mr Fry railed against this notion of the Almighty in ways that upset quite a few people, some of whom suggested that he ought to be more respectful of other people’s beliefs.

I maintain, however, that simply by asking the question of someone who was well-known as being an atheist, on the assumption that his position was basically wrong, the questioner was being pretty disrespectful of his subject’s own beliefs (or lack of them) himself and, as such, pretty much deserved whatever unfortunate results he got.

I suspect that, in a similar situation, I would have refused to engage with the question at all, simply because, if you don’t believe that there is a God, why on earth would you accept the notion that you would ever come face-to-face with one? If that is your own belief, then the question is immediately valueless and not even worthy of a reply.

I think it’s pretty ironic, too, that so-called “modern” religions can be so very dismissive of the more “primitive” religions of the Greeks, Vikings or Romans, when just as many people were completely convinced of their essential truth with just as little evidence as the modern ones are, and I suspect that many of the current faiths will be thought of as being just as ridiculous as they are currently thought to be in a few short centuries time.

These things are, after all, basically human constructs designed to try and make some sort of sense of a chaotic world and keep people under control and prevent them from behaving in an anarchic manner.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m quite happy to let other people believe what they like just as long as they’re prepared to accept that other people might have a different point of view that makes just as much sense and means just as much to them as anything they might choose to believe themselves. It’s the obsession with “converting” me or “improving” me, or using forms of “persuasion” to try and change my point of view that bothers me, not because I don’t believe in healthy debate, but simply because it rarely seems to be treated as a two-way street.

There’s also this stranger notion that you sometimes get, that people without faith are incapable of living “good” lives, which is, of course, complete and utter nonsense. Most of us don’t need a list of instructions from a book to tell us that stealing and killing is wrong, we just know that it is because a lot of us are trying to be decent human beings living in a civilized society because that’s what we’d like it to be, and whilst organized religion does sometimes grease the wheels that allow this to happen, it’s not the only route to get there.

And as to politics…?

Well, you’d probably better not get me started on politics…

After all, you know what you did, don’t you?

TWO FOR TWO

Well, maybe now it could even be called three for three, if you count these words as I’m writing them. Time, you see, is an odd cove to have as your master; The situation remains at two posts in two days (possibly written for two people), but the very process of stringing these words together here actually starts to build the third, and, by the time I actually publish – or choose not to publish - this piece it will be (future tense) the freshest, newest thing to be found here (present tense), and will as be old and as raddled as yesterday’s mayfly (past tense) by the time you happy few cast your eyeballs over it in contempt.

Anyway, setting all that aside, I suppose that I should clarify whatever it is that I’m talking, no, writing about, which is of course, fairly recursive given that this is precisely what I am writing about.

The point is, as those of you who are aware of such things might have actually noticed, after a fairly barren year here in Lesser Blogfordshire, suddenly there’s been a minor glut, and some brand new, frankly bonkers, outpourings of nonsense have suddenly appeared for your delectation and delight, and on two (possibly three - if I can ever be bothered to getting around to finishing this) consecutive days, despite my obvious reluctance to continue with such follies.

Still, don’t get used to it.

I’m still not convinced that this is an appropriate use of my time, and I’m even less convinced that the universe isn’t likely to shrug in a mildly Gallic “couldn’t care less” kind of a way, and turn back to getting on with absolutely anything else, the merest insignificant morsel of which would have to be more engaging, relevant, and worthy of its attention.

Which brings us to the point, really, in a haphazard, crazy, round about kind of a way. A point that I’ve been making to myself for much of the year; If I can’t really write, surely it’s better to leave it to those who can, and to those who might actually have a point of view or an opinion that actually matters to someone. Speaking (or writing) as someone who has found themselves occupying an increasingly irrelevant corner of the cosmos has led me to finally understand that the only time that I’m wasting is my own and even I, antisocial and lazy as I am, could find far better things to occupy my time.

Meanwhile, I keep on asking myself whether I care about such matters, whilst endlessly demonstrating that I clearly, most obviously do, otherwise I wouldn’t keep on fretting, obsessing, and going on about it, even in my own mind when I’m clearly not doing it, my mind keeps on getting back to why I am not doing it, and whether anyone actually cares about whether I am.

As to whether I should care, of course, well, that’s a completely different matter. There is, after all, a lot of things that I ought to be caring about in this big, brutal world where, much as our own country did in what we like to call less civilized times, people can still be burned, butchered or beheaded simply for having a different belief system, sexual preference, drawing pictures, or writing a few words online that someone else happens to disagree with.

In the end, the fact that writing blogs is something that’s getting people murdered in other parts of the world should either make you more determined than ever to write one, or make you cower away in fear at the very prospect, even if your own outpourings are little more than a bit of relatively harmless fun.

However, and in the spirit of full disclosure, coupled with a slight sense of embarrassment about the whole thing, if I’m being honest, I am still very uncomfortable with the culture of “Meeeeee-ism” in society, culture, and (it sometimes seems) the whole ruddy world, of which, hypocritically, this must be considered a part, and so sometimes it felt as if the very best thing I could do was to run away from that, stop contributing to the general mish-mash of screaming self-obsession that currently stains our world, and that, too, has contributed to this almost schizophrenic relationship that I have developed with the online world.

Meanwhile, it has been suggested to me that, as I seem to have been drawn to the “dark side” of what we once called “microblogging”, I might wish to share some of that ephemeral chatter with you from time to time, but I’m still not very sure of the wisdom of that given that, by its very nature, the whole point of Twitter is that, like the mayfly, it’s there and then it’s gone, but maybe I’ll rethink that another day.

It has, at least, finally kindled something of an interest in the dark arts of poetry, for which I should, I think, be grateful, so that’s an optimistic side-effect few could have predicted. Anyway, anyone who wants to can sign up to Twitter, join “the conversation” and, if they really, really want to ruin their mornings, follow my nonsense via @MAW_H (I suspect usually to be found under the hashtag “WhyDon’tYouKeepYourBigMouthShut?).

After all my efforts over those past two mornings, however, it does still seem as if my little theory that the more I write, the less attention is paid to these pages, and vice versa, has indeed come to pass, as yesterday’s little offering triggered the least number of clicks on that jolly old number counter that these pages have seen in quite some time, which was, I’ll grant you, the very topic of that minor offering, even if nobody could have known that without actually reading it, which they didn’t, forming a classic paradox of a “Catch 22” kind.

Meanwhile, I’m starting to believe that my own wordsmithery has been infected by some form of mental “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”, not that I’d ever want to call it that, or be flippant about a condition that debilitates the lives of many people, a few of whom are actually known to me. It’s merely that the symptoms I’ve been describing in terms of my writing did seem be rather similar.

Anyway, “on that bombshell” as it were, for the moment, at least, it is at least nice to find myself able to string a few words together again, even if only for a day or two, after so many months of not being able to, or even being able to pluck an idea from the ether to then not feel able to explain properly…

And so, with that in mind, Lesser Blogfordshire still lives on with its tiny life of quiet desperation, so, until the next time…

I know I'm no poet

(These words tend to show it)

Yet I spend so much time

Producing bad rhyme.

Just look at the sort of guff that you’ve (really not) been missing out on (!!!)

ZERO SUM

I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a while now but somehow we’ve never quite got there.

“What” I hear you wonder “Is the old fool blathering on about now?”

Well, bear with me and I’ll tell you.

I’ve been waiting, relatively patiently I feel, and for quite some considerable time I might add, for the counter that counts the page views to this blog to have a “Zero Day” on which it fails to shift one single digit, so that I could officially declare the whole thing dead and buried and finally get to move on to those trickily abstract “other things” that lurk so naggingly in the back of my mind.

Life, of course, is never that simple, and, of course, when you’ve got over a thousand bits of nonsense rattling around in the archives, I suppose it’s fairly likely that some random thought or other that you once had will draw the attention of some passing online searcher-bot at some point during the average day, no matter how briefly.

Such robots have always been drawn to the word “post” I’ve found, and they seem to have an extraordinary obsession with the idea of Penguin Biscuit jokes, so unless I go back and erase whichever of my musings once contained those words in their titles, I suspect that the Zero Sum Game is still unlikely to occur for a while at least which is, I suppose, quietly gratifying in some small way.

That said, it’s also rather interesting (well, I say “interesting” but you know what I mean) for me to discover that, give or take a couple of hundred viewings or so, these humble pages are almost equally as popular when I write nothing as they ever were when I was slogging my heart out trying to add some of my nonsenses on an almost daily basis.

There’s something, I feel, to be learned there…

So, in a last ditch attempt to finally frighten the last of the search-bots away, I thought that, given that I found myself with the opportunity for a day or two, I might as well write something for a couple of mornings, if only to bing the numbers down.

So far, it seems to be working quite well.

So, I’ll dredge another dull little anecdote from the dark recesses of my day, and see if I can finally put it all out of our collective misery.

Yesterday evening, I suddenly found myself with an extra hour to spare before making the trek to the station for my nightly rendezvous, and, as is sometimes my way, instead of leaping towards the keyboard in a whirlpool of creative frenzy, I found myself idly perusing the DVD shelves where, to my surprise, I found an old “Best of ITC” collection that I must have ordered once upon a long ago and never actually got around to watching.

Well, to be honest, at least three of the episodes were already likely to be in other sets I already had, so I probably unwrapped it one lunchtime when I was working from home, watched most of the groovy title sequences, put it on the shelf to gather dust, and almost completely forgot that it was there.

Anyway, almost at random, I picked out the episode of “Department S” and what a crackingly entertaining forty-odd minutes of television it turned out to be. Honestly, despite expecting it to be a whole load of cheesy nonsense, I found that I really, really enjoyed it. Heck, it even had Anthony Hopkins in it as the guest star of the week and that was jolly unexpected, I can tell you.

It was kind of like “The ‘X’ Files” but twenty years ahead of its time and with kipper ties, and, I imagine (because I’m really NOT going to buy the entire series) that having three leads did mean that they could alternate the storylines around one or other of them as each episode required. Naturally, this being made in the sixties, the female lead got to wear miniskirts and do rather a lot of filing, but it was quite remarkable for having a black character as the head of this mysterious government department (I presume that the “S” stood for “Strange”) that handled all of the weird cases and kooky stuff that the CIA, Special Branch and Interpol found far too baffling.

Back in the sixties, “Department S” only lasted one year and, because he became the “break out” star and (believe it or not) something of a “sex symbol” the character of Jason King, played by Peter Wyngarde, got an eponymous spin-off series which was much the same format only less so, and was eventually consigned to the dustbin of TV legends, and the groovy theme tune added to a hundred compilation CDs.

Sometimes you happen upon a format for a TV show and think “What on earth were they thinking making that?” but I reckon, in my own weird and wonderful kind of a way, that “Department S” might be one of those shows very worth looking at for a bit of a resurrection.

It had a great theme tune, too, by the way.