I need to start today's Sunday Ishmael by apologising, most sincerely, for my heteronormative privilege.
Right,
that's out of the way and I can move on to explore the preposterous
case of the actress who has cut off her boobs to spite her face - sorry -
to feel comfortable in her body. And to prevent children from dying - I
didn't make that up. Sorry, the actor who has had his breasts removed
surgically. And has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show to boast about
it, in a broken little voice.
What
is it like to walk around in this space that is you? asked Oprah, in
all seriousness. Oprah's got lots of booby, and seems pretty damn
pleased about it, judging by the amount of cleavage on display.
Anyway, back to heteronormative privilege. Said privilege has allegedly been much exercised by gorgeous, pouting Doctor Who assistant, Mickey Smith.
It's tough in time and space -
Mickey
alleges that Captain Jack Harkness is worse, but gets away with
bouncing his penis on the shoulders of random females because he is
charming and gay.
Doctor Who production team, our jobs're safe for another fifty years.
It
has become normal for people not to introduce themselves but demand
first your self-identification to them; we get calls all fucking day
which open, Are you ishmael smith to which I reply, perfectly
reasonably, that's not the question, the question is Who the fuck are
you? You called me, never mind who I am, who are you, you got no
fucking manners?
If you were a friend and had my number legitimately you'd know who I was, wouldn't you?
Often,
you can tell by the delay and the background noise that this call is
coming from a criminal call centre in Islamabad or whatever they call
Delhi, these days.
I
have a formula, now, for these cunts. He or she says Good morning, Sir,
how are you, I am Keith or Sally, calling from Microsoft about your
computer. Ah, Keith, I say, how is your mother? My mother? Yes, I saw
your mother on the internet, last night, fucking a herd of pigs, sucking
their curly cocks. But your mother, Keith, she may be a fat, poxy old
whore but at least she's honest, whereas you're just a thieving black
cunt, aren't you ? You're not Keith, you're Ahmed or something. If it's
Sally on the phone I say, Ah, Sally, you sound like a nice girl. Why
don't you go and do proper prostitution, instead of trying to rob people
in foreign countries, you worthless cunt.
People
are quite shocked when they hear this, gasping the R word, you can't
say that, ishmael. But these people are trying to steal money from us,
they are not really from Microsoft, they bought our 'phone number and
they call people like us all day long, hoping to get the bank details of
some poor soul and rob them; racism be damned, they're thieving black
cunts, that's what they are, they're the racists, trying to rob
well-mannered British people who are soft and polite, conditioned to be
nice to vermin. They have declared race war, declared that they want to
rob me of what little we have. I've been here getting-on for twenty
years and the most black people I have ever seen have been in my house,
friends, visiting me; honest, not invent. That wouldn't wash, though,
with the Virtuous, to whom it is the pious word which counts more than
the deed.
There's
no fucking end to this tele-banditry. I had a recorded one a couple
of weeks back. Some cunt saying he was from HMRC, it was about my tax
and if I didn't call him back immediately I risked imprisonment. Now,this obviously works sometimes or they wouldn't do it and one wonders
why the government doesn't do something but the government, of course,
will be in the pay of the companies that organise it all, the
government, in fact the parliament, are consigliere to Organised
Crime, of which 'phone terrorism is just a small branch. When it comes
to the unwonted approach of strangers, therefore, I shoot first.
He did, too - I was present when he fired the round of pig-fucks into Keith. Here's a lengthier essay from the draft archive from 2012.
Thoughts before Heart By-Pass Surgery.
It
was just personal stuff, from my personal pockets and off my personal
person; my white Swatch watch, my reading glasses, a pen and a little
wallet with AA card and organ donor card, some money cards and a
hundred quid of Run-Away-From-Hospital cash money - proper money, to get
me a cab or a train somewhere, if necessary, and there were some
books, too. It all had to be packed, with clothes and pyjamas and
toiletry stuff into a couple of small suitcases and then Stored Away. Mr
Ishmael, you'll be going to theatre in the morning and then you'll go
to the Intensive Care ward and then to the High-Dependency ward and
only then will you come back here, so it has to be Stored Away. Nurse
said this as though it was an epic of tribulation, this Storing Away
business, like this situation - longish-stay patients from two hundred
miles away bringing stuff with them - was a huge inconvenience to them,
but then it seems to me that acting like a martyr to patient-invoked
inconvenience is part of a nurse's basic training, how much better
would their lives be without any fucking patients, clogging the place
up?
Shouldn't be a surprise to me. I knew, even before reading Erving Goffman's Asylums,
way back before before, that institutions exist and are organised
solely for the benefit of their staff; schools, hospitals, prisons,
universities, parliaments, the staff, or the faculty, as they call
themselves or the Honourable Members, are the permanent residents and the
patients, students, inmates or electors just have to be managed in as
easy and desultory a fashion as can be got away with.
Teachers
don't give a fuck, do they, they can't give a fuck, that their charges
leave them unable to frame a sentence, unable to do
two-times-fucking-two; alright, granted that the rot is set-in so deep
that now a couple of generations of teaching folk don't know grammar,
spelling or mental arithmetic themselves but they must, outside their
whited sepulchres, encounter ordinary people, non-teachers, people like
you and I, who can read and write and add-up without a hand-held
instrument of Satan..........they must just have no shame, teachers,
and they get around that deficit by doing what all such people do, they
hide behind the battlements of what they call their profession.
Hospital
nurses, though, in the main, must be among the most institutionalised
of lazy maladroits, shiftless, dispirited, keen not to nurse but to
idle, gossiping; to bully, harangue and proscribe; washing their
uniforms in the same washing machine as their children's nappies,
travelling to work, via the shops, or who knows where, in their
uniforms, daubing their hands with this gelshit, as though 'twere
infection control made goo, fuck all the other violations of common
sense, I've got this stinky goo on my hands, and anyway, I'm going on my
break, now.
I've
been in a few Highlands clinics and in three of them I contracted MRSA -
months on antibiotics, each time, months of worry. And I know exactly
why, there is no mystery, it's that the nurses are dirty, lazy
bastards.
The Aberdeen hospital is massive:
It employs
thousands of people and occupies acres and acres over six sprawling
floors, miles of fucking corridors, shops, restaurants, clothes shops
and one of those rip-off joints selling 'papers and crisps and salt-fat-and-sugar shit, wall-to-wall poison for those already ill and their
visitors. There's a chapel and an art gallery. Surely, I thought, they
can find some small corner for a few suitcases, they can only do a
coupla heart cases a day, at the most you're talking about a dozen
suitcases at any one time in the cycle; why is it that the public
sector jobsworth - whom I defend before all comers - so loves to
persecute her customers with trivia and gabshitery. Space is at a
premium, she whined, we don't have room for suitcases. I don't give a
fuck if you throw all this stuff in the fucking incinerator, Nurse, I
mouthed, I have got more fucking stuff than you could conceive of and I
will very swiftly get some more fucking stuff brought in, just get your
stupid face out of mine, just fuck off and bully some other heart
patient, you fat, stupid, idle bitch. Never entered Nurse's feeble mind
that this bloke is going for bigtime major surgery in the morning and
maybe I should be nice to him, polite, thoughtful, attentive, you know,
act like a nurse.
They
were only two small suitcases and they'd been full when I arrived at
the hospital, fully-clothed; the preparatory booklet had said nothing
about Everything Being Stored Away and I'd thought - if I thought about
it at all - that there'll be a locker and a drawer wherein I can park this
stuff, that's what normally happens. Anyway, I had this packing-up of
every little thing to contend with, before I could concentrate on the
morn's business of having my sternum split open and my heart and lungs
removed for a few hours. Oh, and my leg sliced from ankle to groin and
fuck knows what else. But pack it all away I did, with the aid of a
plastic bag which Nurse eventually provided.
And
with each item that I squeezed and folded into Storable Awayness I
sensed, with fear and loathing, another portion of my identity, my life
disappearing.......
I
remembered that just before my late friend, Dick, passed away, I sent
him a birthday book, via Amazon: The Good Soldier, a faction novel
about the Iraq Occupation and that when I was at his house maybe
eighteen months after he'd died, there it was, on the bookcase, a
bookmark a third of the way through, creepy stuff, there it still was,
this book, a tangible bond between he and I, more durable,
unfortunately, than was life. And I had taken a book with me to
hospital - Stainless, a gothic/LA vampire story - which mrs ishmael had
started and abandoned before I got to it, she being an emeritus
professor of vampirology, amongst other things, she had seized it upon
its arrival, sent by a friend. She read half of it and then dismissed it but I read it
all in virtually one go and as well as some elegantly crafted writing
there were all sorts of observations about Hollywood and LA and showbiz
which could only have been made by someone who, like the author, Todd
Grimson, lived there - you couldn't make it up. Oh, you could make up
the vampire stuff easily but the characters from within and on the edges
of celluloid celebrity made deranged, home-grown monsters like Bruce
Forsyth and Piers Morgan look like normal, decent individuals; they
were truly and wholly believably decadence made flesh. Would I live to
urge a complete reading on Mrs Ishmael, should I scribble a note inside
the cover, Oh, by the way, Dear, now that I'm dead, I do - or I did -
think that you should try this again? It's a morbid game, being in
hospital.
I
never take my watch off, it is as light as a feather and waterproof,
well, once in a while I take it off and wipe a damp cloth over the bits
in contact with my skin but that's only for a minute or so. A couple of
years back some mystery form of arthritis or neuropathy - no swelling,
just chronic pain - made wearing a watch very uncomfortable. My friend,
Mike, the former JumboJet pilot, said that he'd stopped wearing a watch
the minute he retired and never missed it, there's clocks everywhere,
he insisted, in the car, on the computer, on the cooker, on the phones,
who needs a watch. Well I tried it for a couple of weeks and I found
that I do need a watch, doesn't matter how many devices there are now
with the exact time on them, it isn't the exact time that I want, a
roughly correct time'll do, just as long as it's there, where it's
always been, on my wrist. So I put my heavy metal watch in the drawer,
with other redundant treasures and tried a lighter, leather-strapped
one, that was just as bad, hurt like Hell, so I bought this Swatch one
and it's perfect. I love it. I love it in the way I love my Smart
car, there's no chrome, there's no acres of leather, no fake walnut
strips, no pretence that you're actually, gentlemen, sitting in your
club, not that you're a member of a club, no pretence that this vehicle
was put together by pipe-smoking craftsmen in white overalls, the rev
counter and the speedo look like they were made out of hairdryer
material but my one-litre sports version Smartcar goes like stink, even
stinkier if you use the paddle-shift instead of the auto, you can let
the roof down at any speed and all this is because anything that can be
plastic is plastic. You could offer me any number of oily, smoky MGBs,
Cs, GTs; Spitfires, GT6s - all that blokey rubbish - and I wouldn't
exchange my Smart car. And as for Swiss watches, well, we only ever had
one, cost a grand in a mad moment and it was forever in the jeweller's,
being serviced or cleaned or regulated or some fucking snooty
horologists' hocus-pocus that cost a minimum hundred quid just for
taking the back off. The Swatch keeps perfect, waterproof time, it
doesn't hurt me, I can read it in the dark, I can change the battery
myself and it cost thirty quid.
These
tiny discoveries which we make - about Stuff and how it works, whether
it works, about Design, really - sort of make us feel better about
ourselves and at the same time angry for having been suckered for so
many years by all the other stuff that doesn't work, was never meant to
work. So, although the watch is just a watch it is important to me
inasmuch as finally, eventually, after all these years I have
sorted-out the whole watch shitfest. I don't want a Rolex, they're
vulgar; I don't want an Omega, I don't go diving in wrecks, I don't go
climbing Everest; I am not a submarine commander, I don't want a Tag
Hauer, I don't want a Phillipe Patek, all I want is my cheap, little
indestructible Swatch. And I could kick myself because I bought my
daughter one over thirty years ago and thought Fuck, this is some cool
shit, but I was too much ConsumerMan to buy myself one, Gold Avia,
that's the thing for me, a gentleman's timepiece. But here I was, in
ward Z, as I came to call it, not only taking my watch off but Storing
It Away.
I
dunno about you but at the back of my mind, with any general unaesthetic, anything, even just for a lower back manipulation, I get
that fixin' to die feeling. I am sure I'd get it anyway but I did an
awful lot of business with surgeons and anaesthetists and although some
of them were fine, decent people, a lot of them were complete Jimmy Carr
arseholes but worse than that the nature of my business took me into
their homes, I met their families, their lovers and in some of them
there was some crazy shit going on; one of the anaesthetists was, as
well as her day job, a battered wife; I wouldn't want her, God bless
her, putting me to sleep for a split second. Anyway you look at it,
they're just people and even if they're not fuck-ups they could have had
a bad night, or a row before leaving home. We
Zen-Presbyterian-Marxists believe that Shit Happens, that we should take
what we have and give it to the poor and that (now more than ever) the
workers of the world should unite. But mainly we believe that Shit
Happens. And I used to know but now I believe that most of the Shit
Happening happens to me.
I
looked at my little wallet, a card case, actually, I never felt
grown-up enough for a wallet and it's only since cards became compulsory
that I've even had this little thing with it's serried, internal ranks
of pockets. At least it fits in my hip pocket and I don't have to wear a
jacket to accommodate one of those long wallet things which grown-ups
favour. Back before before, I used to just keep money in my pockets,
like a decent fucking Christian did. My old friend, Felix, though, used
to carry a fucking purse - one of those half-circular, folding,
zipperless ManPurses that you open and tilt and jiggle about until some
coins slide into view, complete load of bollocks, I blame his parents,
both Oxford dons, I mean, a half a crown or a few shillings or coppers
were never that important that you had to keep them in a purse, not like
they were gold sovereigns. And it'd only hold about a quid, anyway,
less if it was all in pennies, or pence. Good for fuck all, only make
you feel more anxious, not less. Or maybe you'd just forever be saying
No, that's alright, my good man, you keep the change, old purse is
groaning a bit at the seams, must be, Oh, sixty pence in it, or more.
You see, the ManPurse is just some of that shit we were talking about,
shit that doesn't work, never could work. It's what pockets are for,
putting small change in, most blokes have and have always had access
to at least three pockets, any one of which will comfortably hold more
than a purse, and furthermore, although men can and do lose their
trousers in a variety of circumstances, this event can be nowhere near
as frequent as is losing the fucking purse. I suppose one could lose
the trousers and if one was dressed for, shall we say, the city, still
retain one's purse in any number of jacket or waistcoat
pockets................. It's not even as though he was tight, Felix,
far from it. But I looked at this little wallet of mine and started
poking about in it, just to save mrs ishmael from having to do so,
should the anesthetist be pissed or should the surgeon just up and
fucking kill me because a few years ago I had one of his brethren
arrested and hauled down the nick. And when I plumbed the depths of
this little appurtenance there was all sorts of stuff in there, receipts
for this and that which I had squirreled away, maybe for sentimental
reasons, tickets for this and that. And as I was smoothing-out these
ancient scraps I was up against the clock, for two nurses would be
coming in a few minutes to give me some Temazepam, which they guaranteed
would knock me out in the blink of an eye, unaware, bless them, that as
a younger man I would've guzzled the contents of their pharmacy and
then ridden a motorcycle on a highwire across Niagara Falls whilst
reciting the Illiad and rolling myself a joint, in mid-air. I dunno, were
those the days ? Maybe they were. Alright if you survive them. Some
didn't. But in another time they might've died in a war. At least the
hedonistic, early mortality Baby Boomers had some fun, before choking on
their own vomit or crashing their cars. I think it was fun, anyway.
Never, in any event, for me, would be the Rewards of Obedience, no
Flowers of Success would smell for me, no prizes englitter my grasp.
But then the road to Hell has a silver lining, invisible, intangible to
the Obedient.
And that's Nursie's function, to make you Obedient.
Extract from The Sunday Ishmael Special Kennedy/Dr Who Edition: Did Lee Harvey Oswald abduct Madeleine McCann? Doctor Who to Investigate. published 24/11/2013
It was just personal stuff drafted 8/9 2012
Both anthologies of the work of mr ishmael and his young Polish friend, Stanislav, Plumb Cheap for You: Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack - are available to purchase for mere money at Lulu or Amazon. It is cheaper to buy from Lulu. Here's how to buy your own copies:
Link for Hard Back :
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/hardcover/product-njr7vg.html
Link for Paper Back :
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/paperback/product-wq2kpg.html
36 comments:
Fabulous about the nurse terrorists and stuff generally that doesn’t work because it’s there just to crush our spirit. Your council worthies included. At least yours haven’t been arrested yet, unlike those here in Corruption Central.
Great writing. The signs were always there, weren’t they, that this hell was approaching.
Hiding in plain sight, mr bb - all of it. As long as we were distracted by baubles, bangles and beads - bright shiny things, as the song has it, we simply didn't pay attention to the diseases stalking us - AIDS, SARS, MRSA; to the corruption within our institutions (because, until Boris, they hid behind a smokescreen of serious respectability - you wonder how the Queen manages to keep a straight face), to incompetence, to the reward of venality, to the massive gap between the wealthy and those who are expected to pay themselves to have highly flammable cladding removed from their tower blocks so that they don't burn like Roman candles, and to Death itself, invited in for his Harvest Home.
A chum of mine told me the other day that Covid was designed and released specifically to reduce global over-population by culling the poor, the old, the sick and disabled. If you seriously believe that, then you you couldn't have a lower opinion of the human species.
So who has been arrested in your neck of the woods, mr bb?
I don't think our council officials are corrupt - but I do think they are idle, time-serving, unmanaged and far from scrutiny. I suppose it depends upon your definition of corrupt. I don't think there is a brown envelope culture - but there might be, how would I know? During my entire career, I've never been offered a cash sweetener, but then I've never had any lucrative favours to hand out to the rich. But I do think that there is a who-you-know culture and an active protocol of keeping the Elected Members in the dark.
Fabulous, reflective essay by my late husband, on the eve of life-threatening surgery. Easy to see Nursie, thundering through the wards like a Highland heifer, in a different uniform, 80 years ago, chivvying those about to take a "shower" at Auschwitz: " Store it Away, you won't be needing that."
Glad you enjoyed this week's Sunday Ishmael - I forgot to credit our roving reporter and editor, mr verge, who drew my attention to the mad little girl who has removed the possibility of mummy-milk from any future babies she may have should she change her mind about this bollocks, and to the plight of heteronormatively privileged Mickey Smith. Chapeau, verge.
Fat Controller Joe Anderson and Degsy Hatton, among others, Mrs I. It is a fine city, Liverpool, but it is run by criminals within and without the Town Hall and has been for far too long.
There is some faint chance now of a cleansing.
I hope the storms aren't with you up there, Mrs I. It's bracing enough down here.
It has been a gorgeous sunny day here in the north, mr bb. Proper Bank Holiday gardening weather. I think you've been having a drop of rain, haven't you?
Bit of a Herculean task, to clean up Liverpool - you've had some right old fashioned local government. Did you ever read or see Alan Plater's Beiderbecke Trilogy? Beautifully done, seemingly unconnected events unravelling to a jazz soundtrack,at a pace that would now seem to be dipped in glue, gradually revealing local authority corruption through the innocent interventions of Trevor and Jill.
I do remember it., Mrs I, it was fabulous. And, of course, GBH by Alan Bleasdale which hit a mark.
I missed GBH, but I've noticed it is available on Amazon Prime, so I may have a look at it. I wonder if it completes its time travel successfully - the whole language of TV has changed so much in 30 years that stuff from the Nineties can seem quaintly mannered.
whilst not wishing to condone mr clarke's allegedly obnoxious behaviour - nor make light of the distress which it has apparently caused those in the profession - i really would have expected this whole story to snowball were seriously criminal acts to have been committed over such an extended time-frame.
by this stage, for example, i would at least have reckoned upon a desolate and dishevelled damsel, duly stricken dumb by hysteria, to have burst forth from the west-end-wings with ravishment-replete revelations - all displayed on monochrome title-cards - detailing how she had been chained to a four-poster in the beastly count bluebreath's ladbroke grove dungeon, before being forced to watch him melodramatically eating her hamster.
i mean, how many folks' hamsters has this monster actually eaten, for pity's sake?
frankly, given the video-evidence of this guy's clinically insouciant performances, it's not the police about whom he should be worrying, but the doctors in white coats - because, although no devotee of modern psychiatry, i'd be inclined to diagnose clarke's disposition as classic case of arspergers.
anyway, now that mr tom hardwood's been formally dematerialized and teleported from the neo-imperialist media-spaceship - and is henceforth free to express himself without political, social, or professional inhibition - he can, should he decide to hold up his hands to past misdeeds and move onwards, at last begin produce some proper work...
so in fact this public humiliation in the stocks of celebrity could even be the making of the man.
yes, the black lives matter bro's been ritually ejected from the socially exclusive, but ideologically extremist, establishment-club, and instead been unceremoniously dumped in the i'm a complete cunt club - along with the rest of us - however, liberated as he might currently feel from the constraints of polite middle-class society, it probably wouldn't yet be the most appropriate time - given the delicately balanced legal circumstances - to describe all cops as "bastards".
finally, never be in doubt that clarke's dismissal from favour, like some dirty disobedient street-dog, is far more connected with highbrow-concerns over his uncontrollable mouth, and his rank denunciation of media-industry-racism, than it ever has been with sexual misconduct in low places; whether he failed to convincingly jump on the trump-bashin' bandwagon, avoided boarding the brexit-blocking showboat, or simply rocked the media-mother-ship with acidic allegations of institutional racism, the trigger for clarke's fall from grace is sure to have been socio-political rather than sexual - and soon someone more compliant with the neo-liberal and globalist agenda will be anointed to take his politically-correct place as diversity's star-hoodie and darkie-diva.
@ultrapox - 5 may 2021 at 04:39
the final clause of the above comment would better read as follows:
"...and soon some renta-a-race-prop more compliant with the neo-liberal and globalist agenda will be anointed his super-politically-correct successor as diversity's star-hoodie and darkie-diva."
Strange chums you've got, mrs i. Though there is a nutter down this way who thinks that the climate palaver is a conspiracy to preserve our dwindling carbon fuel reserves so that the elite can last out the next ice age.
Few things make me truly fist-clenched cross these days. How could they? If they did, my brain and heart would have both exploded several months back. However the applause and virtue-signalling that goes on as young people irreversibly edit and mutilate their bodies is one of the last remaining. There is an arsehole in the paper this very day whose now four-year-old apparently told him - when he was two yet - that he wasn't a girl. Guess what? The kid is a twin. Guess again - what sex was the other one? Yes, you got it. Fuck me.
Now call me conceited but I had three of the most precocious kids going and not a one of them was up to discussing the philosophy of gender when they could as yet barely sit up to eat their eggy soldiers. The fecking idiot needs a good rubdown with one of mr ishmael's housebricks, popping down a mineshaft, and his children found some parents with brain cells. They'd be better of with Fagin and Sykes than this ludicrous bastard.
@ultrapox - 5 may 2021 at 04:39
in the above comment, i criminally omitted to include an "a" and a "to" - as in:
"...i'd be inclined to diagnose clarke's disposition as a classic case of arspergers."
and:
"...he can, should he decide to hold up his hands to past misdeeds and move onwards, at last begin to produce some proper work..."
also, further to my previous posting, i feel bound to to inform blog-readers that, this morning, i was disturbed by a most curious dream, during the course of which i discovered a rather overweight - or possibly pregnant - gerbil running loose inside my room. ultimately, the mysterious appearance of this rogue rodent - which upon closer examination was revealed to be exhibiting a heavily bandaged tail - caused me to awake, racked with interminable existential anxiety as to whether or not i should house the intruding beast in my own gerbil's cage - a homestead already hallucinatorily installed at the foot of my bed.
by way of contextual clues for any budding jung or freud out there, i can readily divulge that i was in the habit of keeping gerbils as child, and have recently experienced a minor mouse-problem.
mr mongoose's 'nutter' - "who thinks that the climate palaver is a conspiracy to preserve our dwindling carbon fuel reserves so that the elite can last out the next ice age" - has absolutely nailed it in my opinion - he obviously suspects that leading members of the globalist-empire are feigning stupidity, and in fact preparing for the considerable period of short-term global cooling which they believe will imminently be induced by the developing grand solar minimum. unfortunately, of course, the globalists have, yet again, not done their homework properly, because it's a well known fact that, due to the meandering of a solar particle event dictated jet-stream, grand solar minima cause a meteorological mélange of extremes - such as very hot summers, very cool summers, very cold winters, and very mild winters.
with regard to the gender-fluid toddler, perhaps her parents should meet mr verge's favourite female, mr pippa bunce, who is such a far-out financial wizard that he is permitted by his bosses to use either the gents' or the ladies' lavs - providing he is appropriately attired for the gender-specific call-of-nature.
as an investor, i really wouldn't know whether to trust credit suisse on account of its single-minded promotion and protection of talent, or whether to give the firm as wide as possible a berth due to the entire management being as mad as fucking hatters.
the following extract from the above-referenced financial news article neatly sums up, i believe, the profound depth of commitment displayed by credit suisse to diversity and inclusion:
"while i was worried on my first day, christophe — my amazing boss at the time, who has sadly now passed way — made such a difference in making it clear to me that he and the entire firm were fully supportive."
And while we are not on the subject, there will be a cyber prize for the ishmaelite who guesses nearest - how deep was the water in which Mary Jo Kopeckne died at Chappaquidick? You will recall that Ted Kennedy had somewhow escaped from the vehicle and said that he dove into the waters several times to try to save poor Mary Jo, becoming exhausted and disorientated due to his heroic efforts..
5 may 2021 at 20:17
my apologies for the correction, but in the above comment, the final sentence of the first main paragraph would - in due deference to diversity and inclusion - be better expressed thus:
"upon closer examination, the rogue rodent was revealed to be exhibiting a heavily bandaged tail, however the mysterious appearance of this intruding beast ultimately caused me to awake, racked with interminable existential anxiety as to whether or not i should house him - or maybe her - in my own gerbil's cage - a homestead already hallucinatorily installed at the foot-end of my bed."
Mr mongoose. I have been trying an experiment to cure my anger syndrome. For the last several weeks I have given up reading "news" and my favorite blogs (OK, I lie, not entirely). Anyhow, it works. I'm starting to calm down.
I have done one thing, mr mike, and that is no longer listening to a single word about cv19. And Biden. It is all best just ignored.
Thank you for the link, mr mongoose, to the gender dysphoric twin and the wholly dysphoric parents. Could someone explain to me in what way is that not child abuse? Time for a salutary spot of Philip Larkin:
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you."
And he goes on to place the fucking up in the context of generational fuckings-up so that we are led to the inescapable conclusion that human existence is a ghastly fuck-up and the only sensible thing to do is to not have kids and kill yourself.
As mr ishmael was fond of remarking: individual consciousness is an evolutionary dead end.
The vain, shallow, publicity-avid fuck-up parents are, undoubtedly, monsters. But when social workers come a-knockin at their door, after alert primary school teachers get on the phone, they will have a whole raft of well-rehearsed new-speak to justify their abominable behaviour. No doubt, in many subtle ways, they taught the girl twin that she lacked the important appendage that made her boy-twin a member of an infinitely-superior, desired gender, and have coached her in this preposterous nonsense. I do hope that there are some sensible cis-gender grandparents involved in this nuclear family from hell.
As for the Tavistock - high time it was shut down. I used to work with a Senior Probation Officer - a man who had a reserved occupation during the Second World War - which gives you an idea of the generation that he belonged to. Anyway, he had a moment of epiphany when he decided that he wanted to retrain as a Probation Officer. His training involved the Tavi - probably as a placement during his social work course. It completely fucked him up. This was the guy I told you about, down the road, who would walk into the typing pool, with his dick accidentally hanging out of his trousers. Anyway, his Tavi studies had taught him that the cure for most things that ailed women was to suck cock. You see, he would explain, the breast and warm milk released upon suckling is the formative pleasurable experience for the infant. Men can recreate that deep sense of comfort, belonging and connection by sucking at the breasts of their female sexual partners. Women must substitute for that by filling their mouths with cock. Anxiety? Cock. Unhappy? Cock. Social phobia? Cock. Hungry? Cock. Too fat? Cock. Too thin? Cock. Want to stop smoking? Cock.
Anyway, on a less Freudian note, did ishmaelites ever read the works of Enid Blyton? I'm thinking of the Famous Five. Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy the dog. George, of course, was a girl, with gender dysphoria, whose given name was Georgina, but she insisted she was a boy, really. Back then, we didn't refer little girls to the Tavistock - we accepted that George was a tomboy, she would probably grow out of it, but if she didn't she would carry her tomboyness into adulthood and find a nice girlfriend who didn't like cock and would never dream of sucking one.
mr ultrapox, there are deep Freudian undercurrents in your dream of the damaged rodent. Maybe the Tavi could sort it out for you? Talking of deep undercurrents, mr mongoose,I looked up the Chappaquiddick death on Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick_incident,
which contains everything you'd need to know about the political classes, but doesn't tell us how deep the water was. Apparently, Mary Jo died of suffocation, not drowning, anyway.
Polling day in Scotland and Wales today. So our political classes have to shut up for a bit, and leave space for the psephologists, who are just as bad. Tenterhooks, here - which are hooks for stretching wet cloth on a tenter frame.
I'm glad you've not abandoned us, mr mike, in your escape from news and politics.
That would be called cheating in the old days, mrs i. Tsk, madam.
The answer to the Chappaquidick question is that the car was not completely underwater at all! It had crashed off the bridge and lay upside down on an uneven bit of submerged ground - the front lower than the rear. The rear wheels were above the water. As you say, poor Mary Jo suffocated in the airspace above the level of the water in the back seat area. No diving was required to save her. Anything - a rock, a screwdriver, a wheel-brace out of the boot - could have been used to break a window or stab on airhole in the floor pan.
Why do we not know this? The image I had always had was of a car submerged in deep enough water to make swimming down required. The cowardly bastard just left her to die. And if he got out of the car through a human-sized hole, why did she not get out? Did he shut the door after him or mend the window? Was there a post mortem? How can this be? BTW the two hangers-on who went to the scene to find the woman were swiftly cut from Team Kennedy and sank into obscurity alongside poor Mary Jo.
I see that I had the weeks wrong about the Fish Elections. How do we think it will play? BTW I noticed that there is a parallel available to us. The SNP say that Scotland voted to remain in the EU but were dragged out by the English against their expressed will. One could also say that during the independence referendum, Scotland voted to remain in the Union except for Glasgow who now seek to drag them them out against their expressed will.
Map
That map says everything, mr mongoose - thank you - I hadn't realised that it was only Glasgow voted yes for independence!
Those Kennedys - bad lot.
And now we have another fish war with France squaring up off the coast of Jersey
Jesus tittyfucking Christ, mr mongoose, this one really takes the biscuit. The Daily Mail didn't like my browser, or adblocker, or something, so this, for any ishmaelites in a similar cyberboat who would like to know the grisly details, is the Daily Mirror's online account of the same story (in three batches) :
Daily Mirror
Dad of trans boy, 4, says adults still insist on calling his son a 'girl'
Matthew Stubbings, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, claims Stormy, who was assigned female at birth, first began showing signs of being a boy aged 18 months, as he always hated pigtails, dresses and pretty shoes. The dad of a four-year-old trans boy claims adults struggle to accept his son is male - as many still insist on calling him a girl.
Matthew Stubbings, 44, says Stormy, who was assigned female at birth, first began showing signs of being a boy aged 18 months, as he always hated pigtails, dresses and pretty shoes. He says that by the age of just three, Stormy, formerly known as Emerald, was able to say "I'm not a girl, I think I'm a boy" to both himself and his mum Klara Jeynes, 44. But the tot's dad added that they have had a hard time getting some adults to accept Stormy's decision - as many who they encounter still insist on calling him a girl.
The divisional manager of a highways maintenances company recently posted a heart-warming tribute to his son on LinkedIn and shared a photo of Stormy rocking his new short and spiky haircut. Matthew, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, said: "This is one of my sons. A bright, happy boy who loves his life. "What many people don't know is that when he was born he was 'sexed' as a girl. His gender identity, what's in his head, doesn't match his physical sex. "I am so proud that he knows who he is and isn't constrained by societal norms and prejudices. We can all learn something from this small boy and I learn every day. Everyone is different. We all need accept that people are different and not try to force those around us to fit into a box that suits us. Accepting people for who they are is the only way to encourage innovation, embrace growth and harness the best in everyone. I have permission from my son to post this. He is proud of who he is.”
His post on LinkedIn received almost 300 reactions and dozens of comments from people heaping on praise for the 'inspirational' message.
Matthew added: "I decided to post about Stormy because I'm exceptionally proud of him. He'd just had his hair cut and he was really proud of his hair. Stormy has never been a girl. He has never verbally expressed to us that he's a girl. We've explained to him and his brother what different genders are, [that] non-binary is a thing and you can be that, but he's said 'I'm not a girl, I think I'm a boy'. He's never been a girl. There are times, strange enough, when he says he's non-binary, whether his understanding of that is correct, I don't know, but primarily, nine times out of 10, he'll say he's a boy. We're accepting who Stormy is. He's got a referral to the Tavistock gender clinic. We went to the GP to explain what the situation was and got a referral. We got a reply from Tavistock in Leeds to say he's registered with them, but they don't seem to do anything until they're 10, or they start puberty - whichever comes first. I can't stress how important I think it is to accept people for who they are. It's so important in life. It's not the first time I've posted things [online] that's related to understanding others. I have previously posted a couple of things about trans awareness and gender awareness. I'm taken aback by the number of people I don't know who've sent me messages about it and posted nice things - and people I do know."
According to his dad, little Stormy first started showing signs of gender dysphoria before he could even speak, eager to wear boys clothing like his twin Arlo. The tot also showed interest in firefighters and police officers, while becoming distressed by his pigtails, leading his parents to have some 'fairly grown up' chats with him about his identity.
Matthew said: "[When it started] Stormy would have been two, just before. We did the things that people do. Dressed his brother in boy clothes and gave Stormy pigtails. He got to the point where his hair started getting longer and he didn't want his pigtails anymore. We took them out. He didn't like wearing dresses anymore and it got to the point where unless he was wearing stereotypical boys clothes, he wasn't happy. He refused to wear pretty shoes. It got to the point where he was upset about being forced to wear them. He likes being a firefighter and police officer, but they're actually things girls can do too. His friends are all boys. They've always been all boys."
By the time he was three years old, Matthew and Klara noticed Stormy was beginning to understand more about his gender, with their son confidently announcing he was a boy. The couple spent a long time trying to clarify if Stormy was certain he was not a girl, but by his third birthday, they accepted their child's identity.
Matthew said: "When he started to speak, around two and a half, where he understood the context of what he was saying, he was very clear he wasn't a girl. At some point, I can't remember when, Stormy just said he was a boy. I can't remember the moment when we first asked him, or if he just said it one day. We had a conversation with him, which is difficult, when it was around his third birthday. We asked 'are you just not a girl, or are you a boy?' Both [myself and my wife] have fairly grown up conversations quite regularly about his gender. He knows his gender is for him to decide, not us. It was maybe 12 months ago that we accepted he wasn't a girl."
When Stormy and Arlo started nursery at around one, the little lad had not started transitioning, but as the years went on and Stormy began to live as a boy full-time, Matthew says adults struggled to come to terms with the change.
Matthew said: "We've had problems with adults. He now lives as a boy, goes to nursery as a boy, all his friends know he's a boy. I could talk for 35 minutes about the problems I have with adults accepting how he lives his life. There have been many instances of adults who didn't accept it and insisted on calling him a girl. It was really difficult for them to accept he's not called Emerald anymore, he's Stormy, and he's not a girl, he's a boy. It's really difficult. It's hard. It's hard with people who know the situation. To people who see him in the street, he's a boy, no problem."
Although Matthew insists Stormy isn't worried about starting school in September, he claims he has his own concerns about how the youngster will cope in bathrooms or PE changing rooms. Matthew and Klara have also been forced to sign the tot up for school under his dead name, meaning they worry about facing the same challenges as they have with staff currently.
Matthew said: "I'm really for people being inclusive of others. I'm not just talking about gender diversity; I'm talking about people understanding those around them. It's really important to me. Stormy's fortunate that society is changing. I'm worried because they start reception in September and I'm worried about toilets, changing for PE. That does worry me. Stormy's not worried. He's fine with it and his brother doesn't mind either. The sad thing is that wherever he goes to school, he's always registered under his birth name. His birth certificate is his birth name, so wherever you fill in forms to go somewhere, you have to use their birth names and prove who they are with their birth certificate. I have a little fear that the school will have an issue with it. I just hope people in schools are more professional and more open to it."
The killer line, among many, is surely "I have permission from my son to post this."
His 4 year old child's permission. That's ok, then. (Plenty of photos, too, no facial blurring.)
v./
Thanks for posting the full text of the story, mr verge. It is jaw dropping.
The day you have your first kid is an odd day, isn't it? (I was OK btw with the gas and air.) It is a life changing event, and after a while you learn that you won't break it by picking it up, and that it isn't dead just because you cannot currently hear it shrieking.
And so one passes into the veil of proper parenthood. Within this mad space the fear of losing the beast never really goes away - and it happens to some, a very few, poor bastards - but new fears come. Will it get a tattoo? Will it get pregnant? Will it ever pitch the bloody ball up? It got a what in it's fucking exam? Why does it know no history? Can it not see that that boy or girl is a hopeless skankausaurus? That dress is too small. Will it split, and will you fall out of it? Almost of of these parental fears are passing nonsense.
One wish or ideal remains with every parent I've ever met: we do whatever we can to make the best of the future for the kid. And most of that is actually doing nothing very exciting. It's washing clothes and buying food and holding your tongue. It's the taxi and bank of mum and dad. It's also a great deal of not making a mountain out of a transitory molehill. I am dad. I am boring to you now but BTW five years ago you thought I was perfect. I am here and able to come and get you if you need me to. You are safe here, do you remember? Tomorrow really is another day. Let us breathe and be calm and you will find in a few days that whatever it was, it didn't happen. And even if it did, it wasn't so bad.
And I think that this is how we give the space to new young people to work out what is real and what is not. The tomboys get to grow up to be whatever they want to be. The worries and lunacies of 24/7 insta-panic die away leaving a new grown-up. Part of what we have to do therefore as parents is not to have their nuts or tits cut off while they work out what sort of person they're going to turn out to be.
I am BTW quietly of the opinion - although it is not thought through - that the body you have got is your body and you are the you in it. It would be best if you made peace with that. Some people, as grown adults, choose to disagree with me. That's fine. As long as it is not their mums and dads disagreeing so that they can get a like on dullardbook or a retweet on twatter.
One thing I am sure of. The Tavistock lot need hanging, their gaff burning down, and the land sowing with salt.
Well said Mr Mongoose. Your prose has sent me on a trail of reflection.
It was only when you reach adulthood that you realise that your own parents did actually make a good fist of things after all.
And it is only when you have children of your own that you realise just how much trouble you put your own parents to, mr shoulders.
Thank you for that thoughtful piece, mr mongoose - totally agree - we do the best we can at the time, with the limited personal resources that we have, to bring our offspring through to some sort of happy adulthood. We are hard-wired to do so. I was very young when I had my babies and, looking back, I wish I had made different and, perhaps, better choices through their infancy and childhood - but I did the best I could at the time. It is easy to be Captain Hindsight from the perspective of the present, judging the past, but what good does that do?
I get so cross about breast removal surgery in the pursuit of some fashionable whim because the primary function of the breast is not to attract the male gaze, despite Desmond Morris telling us that the rounded female breast is an evolutionary development to encourage face to facemating to facilitate pair bonding as it mimics the rounded buttock, which hitherto had been a signal to the primate male to approach from that direction - just like all mammals. The idea being that when you recognise the partner who has created all these feel-good oxytocins, you are more likely to stay together, which will improve the chances of the baby surviving - two parents being more successful than one. No, the prime purpose is to produce milk. Having breast-fed my babies,I can tell you that it is a shock and awe moment (in a good way) when you realise that this baby is putting on weight, growing bone and flesh and brain cells solely from the milk that you give it - seemingly endlessly, as the gummy little mouth latches determinedly on, rootling for the stuff of life. An adult woman requires between 1800 and 2000 calories daily, depending on body mass and activity level. A pregnant woman requires an additional 300 calories a day to grow the baby.The lactating mother needs a further 200 calories - a total of 2,300 to 2,500 calories daily. All these extra calories are going into making another human being. It is a miracle, a commonplace miracle, one performed all the time by all mammals. But a miracle, none the less, and to cut off this life-giving organ in order to be able to wear T shirts or leave the shower with a towel tied around your waist instead of under your armpits - is so wrong-headed that surgeons who comply with this frivolous request are wilfully in breach of their oath to do no harm. Breast removal surgery for life saving purposes - as with breast cancer - is a different matter entirely.
Your quiet opinion, mr mongoose, that the body you have got is your body and you are the you in it runs contrary to the concept that informs Matthew Stubbings' belief that his two year old daughter thought she was a boy in a girl's body. It is a fairly ubiquitous religious concept - the idea that the soul is popped into the body - the Catholics believe that the Holy Ghost is present at each act of successful insemination, with His bag of souls, ready to insert the soul; the Tibetan Buddhists go looking for their reincarnated Dalai Lama among infants, equipped with some objects from the last Dalai Lama's life, to see if the candidates recognise the objects.
It is one of those comforting beliefs that protect us from the brutal reality of our existence - we are born, our bodies and minds develop in a symbiotic process of growth, we suffer for a bit, then we die.
And yet - which of us has not had a nagging feeling that there is more to this than that?
Indeed Mrs Ish. Hindsight is a bit overrated. Many a time I’ve thought about things I’ve done and cringed. But then ain’t it the cringeworthy moments that make us?
I could have made a better fist of parenting if I’d had the patience I have now instead of the energy I had then.
And it’s only human to regret n’est pas?
I recall an occasion; slow dancing with my mother at the end of my sisters graduation night.
Being half cut, the opportunity arose to say sorry for all the shit I’d put her through as a teen. Her reaction has been etched into my memory ever since.
She just took my face in her hands, smiled a rather tearful smile, shook her head and said no…
I’d give anything to tell her how much she meant to me.
She knew how much she meant to you, mr shoulders, but you didn't until she had passed away - it is the human tragedy. But you have that lovely moment on the dance floor to cherish forever.
Moving rapidly on, Orkney has returned the first result of the election – no surprise that Liam McArthur has held the seat. The Scotsman tells me that “he received 7,238 votes, comfortably beating the SNP candidate Robert Leslie with 3,369, Conservative Sam Brown at 699 and Labour’s Colla Drake who received 290 votes.
Turnout was 65.4 per cent, an increase on 62 per cent in 2016. Liam McArthur has held the seat since 2007, when he took over from Liberal Democrat colleague Jim Wallace.”
We won't have the overall result of the 2021 election until Saturday - it is a bit of a Schrodinger's cat of a hiatus, this - the thing has happened, the die has been cast - but we don't know what it is.
It looks as Mrs Fish has slipped below her target. Elsewhere the Tories reign. It feels to me like 30 years ago. Labour clueless; Tories rampant; perhaps hubris about to strike. If it wasn't for the fact that the entire world is broke, I'd say that we'd be in trouble some time soon.
The tedious question - with which I used to annoy mr ishmael - remains: what is the Labour Party for?
The elections are another phantasm, happening in some nowhere. We are lost.
Beautiful, wise writing above on parenthood - the darkness notwithstanding.
I like "skankosaurus", mr mongoose, is it your own coinage or something you heard from the mongoslings? Every day a skuleday.
v./
Thanks for the above mrs I, mr Bill, mr M. I struggled with parenting, not because I didn’t love my wife and children, I just felt that I should have been able to provide them with a little more of the good things in life but couldn’t afford them. It was only when my two boys moved on that I/We realised we had done a pretty good job of bringing up two sensible, hard working, considerate young men.
And we are proud Grandparents now.
As an aside, we watched a programme on the PBC with ex footballer Ian Wright about his childhood, growing up with physical and mentally abusive parents. He’s still affected by the trauma today, aged fifty seven. The scars are for life. Those parents of the young girl need a good slap, not just a good talking to.
Dear God, Hartlepool!
They hang monkeys there
Those monkeys, mr inmate, plus Mandelson, equals one very, very dark sense of humour.
And it's plus ca change, not just in the wild NE but also as far as the labour party leadership goes, as the polish plumber reminds us in Vent Stack:
"Stanislav remember that Geordiesboy likelylads, salt-of-Earth Northeasterlies elect Lady Peter Mandelscock and husband, Mrs Renaldo, not just one time, but two times. Very smart electorate. Believe any old shit. If only Lord Mandelscock still Up North swishing around in armoured Daimler with Mrs Renaldo everything be fine and dandy. Everybody have fishy on dishy. Every-body go Blaydon Races.
Mad Cyclops go on Radio 4 programme say favourite record not Arctic Monkeys after all but Fog on Tyne, all mine, all mine. Play all the time when having wank."
For Bruin's Foggontyne, read Starmer's manofthepeepul fish&chips routine.
v./
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