Happy Halloween!

Some of you know that I occasionally write stuff about movies. The fantastic Den of Geek is one of the lucky recipients of my work, and you can read my latest offering (of 25 spooky movies) here.

I hope y'all appreciate how many scary films I had to watch in order to write the list; I now pee my pants if I hear a floorboard creaking in the next room, and if I see a kid with long straggly hair, I'm OUTTA here. Which reminds me... apparently this makes a prank which really will make grown adults scream....

Doesn't anyone think it's kind of odd that something spooky should so closely resemble a movie stereotype? I wondered the same thing watching Derren Brown: Apocalypse. In a nutshell, some poor sod has been deemed to "take life for granted" by his sanctimonious family as well as the TV hypnotist. So with mind-bending cruelty, they *apparently* set him up to believe that a huge meteor shower was due (with the possibililty of this introducing  a "virus" from space). Apparently confident that his only news source would be a particular website, they hacked into his phone and computer, and later planted passengers on a train carrying fake newspapers. (Really? You wouldn't be worried he was going to buy a paper himself? Or use google?)

Admittedly, they were fiendishly clever – employing XFM newsreaders to record fake stories which would then be playing on a radio in a cafe that their victim (Steven) went into. The culmination of the elaborate hoax came when Steven was on a minibus and the "asteroids" started hitting the ground. Derren Brown sneaks up, hypnotises him in 2 seconds, and the next thing he knows, he's re-enacting the opening scenes of 28 Days Later. (Or if we're going to be fair to John Wyndham, scenes from his 1951 novel, Day of the Triffids.)

I can't help thinking that anyone in Steven's position would say "Wait, I've seen this, It's zombies, right?" However, many people (well, teenage boys) believe that a zombie apocalypse could be upon as at any time, so maybe it would seem like the most natural thing in the world.)

Naturally, there are cries that the guy is a stooge, it's all a set-up and we're the ones who are being fooled. Derren Brown strenuously denies it. (But then, can you trust a man who happily admits to victimising a stranger with a faux apocalypse? I think not.)

As with  Keeping up with the Kardashians, my overriding thought was "Thank GOD my family isn't like that." I also couldn't help thinking that being hypnotised into believing you're in life-threatening danger could one day be the latest stunt for thrill seekers. Just as long as somebody hides all the machetes...

Has womb; will get hysterical.

Did you know, the Sun newspaper features a topless woman every day? Of course you did. The words “page three” have been weirdly synonymous with “tits” for years.  It may be something you don’t think about much; I certainly didn’t. I’m not a great reader of the Sun, and I had sort of accepted that they had page 3 girls, the same way I accepted that their articles included sentences such as “Tot-attacking MONSTER to ROT in jail.” It’s just the way they ARE, bless ‘em.

Luckily, Lucy Holmes is not afflicted with a similar apathy; she has started a “No more Page 3” campaign which is snowballing with a speed that must be most alarming to Dominic Mohan, The Sun’s editor. (As of right now, the number is 38,059.)

Labour MP Clare Short attempted to ban page 3 twice, back in 1986 and 2004. A clue to her lack of success can be found in the response from her peers; “As I spoke, putting the case for the removal of pornographic pictures from the press, a large clump of Tory MPs began to giggle and chortle and make crude remarks about me, my bill and my body.” (See what happens when you go to a boys-only school?)

So, is there any justification for keeping Page 3? Neil Wallis wrote amusingly in the Huffington Post this week about “Why the Self-Serving Wimmin Who Want to Ban Page 3 Are So Wrong”. His resorting to a misspelling that nobody has used since the 1970s, along with words such as “hysteria” and “shrill” are all fairly obvious attempts to undermine the campaigners. (Neil, if you want us to take you seriously, learn to spell. It’s Womb-en, ok?)

He also admits defeat rather quickly, saying “The answer is easy to those who will hear it: NO-ONE CARES.” Good. Then you won’t mind if we take page 3 away then, will you?

He’s under the impression that anyone who would dare to vote against the “institution” is out of touch with reality; Sun readers aren’t like that, you see. As he says of its vast readership, “Do those three million worry about Page Three? No, they worry about their kids' health, the rent, putting food on the table, work, their relationship, benefits scroungers, immigration, the telly, and a drink at the weekend.” As Glosswatch puts it, “As a white, university-educated, middle-class feminist, there are many things about which I don’t give a toss. My children’s health and earning enough money to pay the bills, for instance. When it comes to those things, I really couldn’t give a monkeys. I prefer to let the “real women” worry about such mundane trifles.”

So what about all those poor Sun readers who just want to see “a bit of fun” in their newspaper and can't be bothered to turn to the comics? I hate to throw your own words back in your face, Neil, but: NO-ONE CARES. So what if it hasn’t occurred to Sun readers that having sexist drivel might be a bad thing to have in a “family newspaper”? It doesn’t mean that nobody else is allowed to think about it or start a campaign.

Of course, nobody who is in favour of Page 3 wants to see bare breasts in the newspaper for selfish reasons, good God, no! It’s really just a way of doing young, impressionable girls a favour. To take their chances of “modelling” away from them is pure arrogance, according to Mr Wallis: “And why shouldn't a girl stuck behind the bread counter at Tesco, an office girl down the local council, the unemployed, find a new glamorous life via Page Three?”

      What on earth would young girls do without role models like this?

This seems to be quite a common defence of “glamour modelling”. It's the route to a “better life” for many young women! A life which revolves around fake tan and vajazzling and the knowledge that little girls are looking at them and hoping that one day, they too will be topless in a newspaper! Imagine a world where this didn't happen. Imagine a world in which Jordan had never become famous! Wouldn’t that be, um, awful.....?! 

I’m always suspicious of anything which requires the defence “it’s just a bit of fun.” This seems to be brought out all too often, explaining everything from rape jokes to mean practical jokes (all shit and giggles til someone has a heart attack) and of course, beauty pageants in which 8-year-old girls parade around in bikinis and heels. You know what? When something’s a bit of fun, there is no need to point it out. Fun is one of those wonderfully self-evident things. It doesn’t normally involve 50% of the population being valued only for their sexuality. 

As  Benjamin Jones of Mitch and Murray points out: “It should be fairly obvious that a special page in a newspaper dedicated to a woman with her tits out for no other purpose than having the presence of some tits is not really there to advance equality or celebrate women.  It’s there to say “corrrrrrr, nice tits” and that’s it.  And just because they add “Sally, 19, is currently studying politics at Birkbeck” it doesn’t mean she’s being treated as an equal.” 

Wallis wants to know “Why aren’t those (No More Page 3) petition signatories putting their energy into campaigning against, say, female genital mutilation? White slavery? Sexual stereotyping in the workplace? Forced marriages? Under-age sex and pregnancy? TxtSexploitation in schools? The list is endless – in my view, all these are far more important… but silence.”

Well, it’s not really silence, is it? The fact that you know about these issues at all tells you that somebody, somewhere, in the media has reported on them. And as others have pointed out, most people can manage to sign more than one petition. The point is, Page 3 is ONE huge issue we CAN solve very easily, and it would make an immediate difference to women in Britain; we would be assured that showing topless women is the territory of lads’s mags and porn, not daily newspapers. 

Clare Short writes “One young woman told me that she went to a police station in London to report a sexual attack and was confronted by a pornographic calendar. She went home feeling sick. She did not report the attack and felt that she could not trust the police who proudly displayed it on their wall. Another woman went with her small daughter to report a road accident and was confronted by a similar calendar.” The sooner pornography loses its veneer of normality and “harmless fun,” the better. 

So there you go. I don’t care if the lack of Page 3 means that all those poor Sun readers will be sobbing into their cornflakes every morning when they are DEPRIVED of the glorious sight of a 19-years-old’s knockers. Boo hoo. Get over it. (Because it’s not as if they can see bare breasts anywhere else, is it? It’s not like people have the internet on their phones or anything like that.) I don’t even care if there are some young women who were planning to make a career out of taking their clothes off and now have to find something else to do, possibly involving their brains, creativity and imagination. I don’t care if Page 3 is an institution. Time’s up.

You can start by signing HERE.

Even more cheerfulness

Sometimes, something happens which restores your faith in humanity. This article from Jezebel is one of those things. Not only was the victim of cyber bullying able to give an intelligent, articulate response, but the self-proclaimed "european_douchebag" recognised that he couldn't even begin to argue against it and BECAME A BETTER PERSON. Yay!

Best video in the whole world, ever?

As I seem to have been somewhat serious and / or grumpy in posts lately, I will attempt to redress the balance with this video. It is the best ever. I can literally watch it every day and never get tired of it. Aw.

I especially like the way that the cat, after being a little unsure of his new pal's rambunctious attempts to "play", finally gets into it and then he's all "Noooo, come back! I HAVEN'T FINISHED KISSING YOU!"

As youtube vids go, I also like this one:

It's not often that you see something on the internet that you've never seen before, so kudos to you, Jeremiah McDonald!

Jeremy Clarkson's Crash Course in the Law of Attraction

He also heard that women have been laughing at his indiscriminate groping antics.

So, Jeremy Clarkson has decided that “Britain is a nation of 62 million complete and utter bastards.” Why? Well, he thought that it would be a good idea to announce via Twitter that his dog had died, and was then surprised when his 503,861 followers made jokes about it. 

I’m not going to be a real meanie and say “Well, he deserves it because he’s such a horrible, horrible person.” (But he is.) I will, however, make the point that Twitter serves as a mirror. It’s not as if the people who saw his tweets about a dead dog were picked at random. They were all people who had chosen to follow him. And if you were the kind of person who says stupid things all the time in the hopes of getting a reaction, what would you expect?

If Oprah wrote about a sad event on Twitter, she would probably get a number of weirdo replies, because she’s famous and freaks go with the territory. However, I suspect most of her followers would probably react with sympathy, because dog-hating thugs don’t often subscribe to tweets such as "I'm ready to be an instrument. Thank you for an inspiring, spirit filled, blessed #SuperSoulSunday."

So Mr Clarkson, time for a long hard look at the kind of person YOU are?

I am the Captain of my Soul – Unless I Can't Move...

On the 16^th August, Tony Nicklinson lost his “right to die” case at the High Court. Yesterday, he died of pneumonia – exacerbated by his refusal to eat in the days since his defeat. 

Since his stroke 7 years ago, Mr Nicklinson had suffered from “locked in syndrome” – being fully alert and conscious on the inside, but unable to move beyond some facial expressions, the most heartbreaking being his face when he learned that he would not be allowed to die. The judges on his case decided that "voluntary euthanasia is murder, however understandable the motives may be". Because of his inability to move independently, he would have had to enlist help from a family member in order to end his life.

Euthanasia is one of those subjects I’ve always been fairly neutral about – nobody wants to think of people suffering, but equally, when is it ok to turn off the life support? Even people who appear to be braindead have occasionally snapped out of their comas, none the worse for it. And how can you trust that the person making the decision really has the patient’s best interests at heart? People can be very odd when wills are in the equation.... 

However, it still makes sense to judge cases on an individual basis. Would the judges have changed their mind about Tony Nicklinson’s fate if they had experienced just one day in his body, communicating through blinks and having to give up every shred of dignity? Mr Nicklinson pointed out; "Judges, like politicians, are happiest when they can avoid confronting the real issues and this judgement is no exception to the rule.” He admitted that his biggest regret was summoning help at the hotel when he collapsed; “If I knew then what I know now, I would have let nature take its course.” 

Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor of French ELLE when he suffered a stroke and became a victim of locked-in syndrome. He painstakingly spelled out every letter of every word of a short book about the experience, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, before he died (also from pneumonia). He describes correspondence from his friends; “Other letters simply relate the small events that punctuate the passage of time: roses picked at dusk, the laziness of a rainy Sunday, a child crying himself to sleep. Capturing the moment, these small slices of life, these small gusts of happiness, move me more deeply than all the rest.” One could argue that as long as you’re alive, it is still possible to find some value in every moment. 

But how long can someone go on living in purgatory? Mr Nicklinson’s response to his high court defeat was: “I am crestfallen, totally devastated and very frightened. I fear for the future and the misery it is bound to bring.” His daughter Lauren told the press “He would rather have three months of the physical and mental anguish of starving himself than 30 years living locked-in.” It’s an understandable stance; not only would 30 years of living mean more years of ‘dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable’ life for you, but also for the family who would have to sacrifice their own lives to take care of you, adding guilt to the list of daily pains. 

So what was the court’s problem with Mr Nicklinson’s “right to die”? As he was extremely keen to end his life, it seems irrelevant that the actual drugs would need to be placed in his mouth by someone else. So it appears that the actual debate isn’t about whether it’s ok to “help” someone die – it’s a debate about the moral rights and wrongs of suicide. The judges decided that Tony Nicklinson had to stick it out rather than end his suffering. 

But like it or not, every human being has the right to kill themselves, if they so choose. If someone is physically incapable of doing so, why is it suddenly someone else’s choice to make?

I ❤ London

I admit it, I'm not a sports fan. I've always thought that watching people cycle is dullsville, and will never understand how a marathon (it's people WALKING! In bunny costumes!) is considered a television event. I was even one of those people who resented the Olympics for the hassle it would cause to public transport and how much it would cost. (Montreal took 30 years to pay off  the debt from their 1976 hosting duties...)

From the very start, it seemed that everything about our hosting would be tarnished with the crappy, incompetent bungling that we're used to from our government. The "Lisa Simpson committing a lewd act" logo caused public outcry; it cost us £400,000 but it turned out that running a contest in a newspaper (see above) would have found better results. Where's Blue Peter when you need them? (I think the one in the top left-hand corner, incorporating "2012" into "London" is particularly ingenious, so I'm just going to pretend to myself that this was the official logo.)

                    BUT THAT WAS BEFORE!!!

Yes, I got sucked into every second of it, from the opening ceremony onwards. I found myself musing on ways we could “improve” the show next time. For instance, we could dress up the shot putters like Roman gladiators. (What? I think it would be fun, and really add something to the atmosphere!) Even better, why not have a fun “sports day” after the real events have finished, when there is no pressure to win? (This is the flipside of getting into the games; I can’t bear to see their little faces fall when they miss out by 0.10 of a second). Wouldn’t we all like to see our sporting heroes compete in a sack race or the egg and spoon race? And just have FUN?

It’s been an amazing three weeks, Britain has probably never been happier, and don’t you just love it when the worst news you can find in the papers is that your country only got silver, not gold? I think we need to have a big rousing chorus of “We are the champions!” to celebrate. Not the Queen song – this one.