Diary of a Suburban Squeen

My Yahoo!Mail homepage is set up to show me Entertainment News, which is usually hilariously unnewsworthy (except for that time Eminem got back from the MTV awards after being HUMILIATED NIGH UNTO DEATH OMG WOE WOE by Sacha Baron Cohen, to find his hotel room had been burgled), but last night, apparently, one of the headlines was about Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher supporting the Iranians protesting against the election result.

And I was thinking thusly: Yay. I too support them. Down on corrupt elections. And then I started thinking about the protests in Iran, and how those people are doing their best to ensure Iran has a fair and free election, which leads to the question, how far do you get to go in pursuit of that?

It is a faded truism to say that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, but I think it poses an interesting question nonetheless. How far can you go in pursuit of a political aim before you reach the stage where the end no longer justifies the means. A protest is OK, right? But what happens if someone’s hurt, or killed? Or what about doing the hurting or killing yourself? That’s too far, isn’t it? But if you live in a country where there are few political freedoms, how else do you get your voice heard, in that country and in the world? Is it acceptable for a few innocent people to die if it means the end of a regime that’s murdered tens or hundreds or more? On a personal level, you’d say no, but looking at the bigger picture, well, maybe?

I don’t know. But it’s interesting to think about things like this.

This morning I was idly glancing across at my neighbour’s copy of Metro, and noticed a couple of bits about David Miliband. Apparently, he’s been heaping praise upon Gordon Brown at the Labour Party Conference and being all smiley and stuff. Ah, I thought cynically, nice try; position yourself as the nice chap, get some press coverage, and then disclaim politely when the rebel element in your party propose you as the new leader, before graciously agreeing. Anyway, Miliband was going on about Brown’s contribution to international development policy etc, and I thought (in my mind), you know what, I don’t have a clue about half the stuff the Government’s done, because it doesn’t really interest me. I keep track of the things that *do* interest me, but a lot of stuff I don’t bother about, and I imagine lots of people are the same.

And the thing is, give me late C19th British politics, and I can give you chapter and verse (please note: this is actually a lie. Ten years ago I could have done; not any more) on the people and the legislation and the political shenanigans and the ins and outs of the various groups and parties. I knew what happened when, and who was involved. I knew (insofar as anyone could) why people chose the actions they did, and why they supported the legislation that they did. We can build up such a clear idea of it all, not only from books, but from the press of the day, and Hansard, and private correspondence and diaries and all that. It’s funny to think that a hundred years hence, people will have a better understanding of the politics of our day than we do ourselves.

Also, moving on from that, how much are we at the mercy of the press? Really, all we know is what they tell us. And you can manipulate that a bit by choosing your sources of information, but only a little bit. It’s slightly freaky. Huh. Anyway, that’s today’s thought of the day.

In other news, I have a couple of genius links to share (that will have already been on some people’s flists, but whatevs):

Barack Obama chats to Jed Bartlet, courtesy of Aaron Sorkin

Hamlet’s Facebook

Simon Pegg writes the end of Spaced

Also, it has been brought to my attention that I do not have a tag for Katie. Please do not think FOR ONE TINY SECOND that this does not mean she is not AS IMPORTANT AS GOD. Clearly, she is. I just don’t bother to tag her as it would be a little redundant given that she appears in practically EVERY POST EVER. Glad we’ve cleared that up. *g*

With the introduction of Twitter (it’s ace), life in the love nest has reached a whole new level of ridiculousness, whereby one of us will post an inane comment and the other, sitting about 80cm away, will get a text message about it. On Wednesday, we went to see Wall-E (OMG so, so lovely, everyone should go and see it RIGHT NOW), and on the way home got near simultaneous and identical texts about the fact that we were once again sitting behind Balding!Quiff!Man on the bus.

Anyway, so, other things of note. A motley crew of us are dashing off to the beach tomorrow somewhere in the vicinity of Chichester (someone remind me why it is we go so far away?!), as is becoming something of a summer tradition. Last year we got rained off, and had to have a picnic-in-the-car (always a joy) and this time we are on tenterhooks as to the likely weather. Why, why, why do meteorologists remain so rubbish at predicting the weather? Surely it can’t be that hard…

Had a little dinner party on Tuesday, which was nice. We ate lasagne and pavlova and drank wine and listened to some more of Helen’s tax party stories – a mainstay of any social function, we are finding. All vee nice anyway, though, Helen, you left behind the book Katie borrowed. And tonight, we are off to the National to see Her Naked Skin, which is about wimmin and such.

Incidentally, I recently read Rousseau’s Discourses on the Arts and Sciences, which only served to demonstrate what a mentalist he was. Currently reading A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind, which likewise. The only thing I remember about Rousseau from studying the Enlightenment in the course of A-level history was a random quote that I found: “Rousseau could ennoble a piece of cheese.” I do not dispute this. He is quite mad enough to have done so, providing it was a savage, uncivilised cheese which lived a life of rustic simplicity and didn’t think too much… so, really, he was probably very fond of cheese. It’s interesting, though, because beneath the crap he does make some interesting points, but it’s so frustrating and anger-inducing reading all the fluff about how great Sparta was because they were all, OK, Spartan, and how rubbish civilisations get when they start arsing around with art and science and trying to know stuff. Frex: “our souls have become corrupted to the extent that our sciences and our arts have advanced towards perfection.” Has a beef with “vain knowledge” (I thought people had got over that whole thing by the mid C18th?) and a desperate longing for “happy ignorance” in a “rustic nation.” Meh. Whatever. As I said, he does have the odd point buried in there, but mostly, I diskard it.

TV is coming back soon!!!! SGA has already returned, and the others will be back soon! Very excited by this. I ♥ TV. With regard to my latest obsession (still incredibly excited about having discovered A WHOLE NEW MEDIUM), have read: Batman Year One, Marvel 1602, Runaways (to date), The Umbrella Academy, Jack of Fables, Invincible vols 1 and 2, and have nearly finished the first vol of Sandman. Probably some other stuff too that I can’t remember off the top of my head. I ♥ comics.

Have booked a table at Giraffe for my birthday – w00t! Also, am having my eyebrows tinted Monday week, which is quite exciting, but I have to remember to go into Kingston on Sunday (boo) for a sensitivity test. Bum.

I did a meme on xanantha’s journal, and one of the questions was about my philosophy on life. Which is a pretty good question I think (unlike the inevitable and annoying “Are you a glass half-empty or a glass half-full type person?”), and so I thought I would tell everyone about the Squeenly Philosophy of Life™.

You all know (well, probably most of you know), I am not religious. I do not believe in God. God may or may not exist, I don’t know, but I don’t believe he does. I believe the world is as it appears. I believe people are physical entities which are born, live and eventually die. I don’t believe in the concept of a soul as distinct from our bodies: I believe our personalities, what makes us us, is just the result of the electrical impulses of our brains processing our experiences. When we die, we die. That’s that. Game over. Our bodies are destroyed, and the world goes on. I don’t believe in any kind of heaven/after-life/whatever. There is no higher plane of existence to which we should aspire. Life isn’t a passing phase, a test, something you have to get through before you hit the good stuff. As Hannah says, “if the answers are in the back of the book, I can wait” – I don’t think there are any answers (or a back of the book, for that matter). All we can do is to make the most of our lives, because that’s all there is. What is the point in striving for greatness in life, if that’s not what it’s all about?

I hate the idea of fate, or pre-determination. So, yes, if you could understand the world and everyone in it, maybe you could predict the future, so really there is no freedom of choice blah blah blah, but you know what? Nobody can understand the world and everyone in it, so the point is moot. I still make the decisions I make: I still decide what path my future will take. If it’s inevitable, so what? I don’t know that. I still make my decisions not knowing how they will eventually turn out. I dislike the idea of people palming off the consequences of their own decisions with “it’s fate,” or “this was always going to happen,” and blaming some higher entity for what they have done themselves. I don’t believe in abrogating responsibility for my actions to anyone else.

I believe in social rules (the Ten Commandments being an obvious example from my own religious background), but I don’t believe they were handed down from on high, because that implies that we can’t think of these things for ourselves. Human beings can and do know the difference between right and wrong; we can formulate our own social rules; we can see how best to organise society so we can all rub along (just because this doesn’t happen doesn’t mean we can’t work out what should be done in theory). We are not given these rules but then must be punished like naughty children when they go wrong (flood!God, I’m looking at you…): we can decide for ourselves, and take the consequences when they happen.

1. I don’t know if any of you have been blessed with seeing any of the posters/trailers for Eddie Murphy’s latest film, Norbit. Which looks like it might possibly raise a grin or two if you have absolutely nothing to do for an hour and a half. But it makes me cross because what is with the film industry? What is so fucking wrong with being overweight? Why are only thin women film stars, and fat women (or frankly, fairly normal women) destined to remain the comedy value or the Best Friend? Why, for that matter, are we all so hung up on appearance? I am who I am in my head; what I look like on the outside doesn’t really have a great deal to do with it. Whether I am a good or bad person, whether I am mean or generous, funny or serious, clever or stupid, liberal or reactionary: NONE of this has ANYTHING to do with how I look.

2. OMFG. Heroes. The love continues unabated. And now we have hiatus for SIX WEEKS!!! Katie and I hate America now. All we have to cope with in England is a couple of weeks here and there for Wimbledon and snooker…

3. Woohoo – today is my Friday! We’re off to the Full Mooners gig tonight, which is jolly exciting, and tomorrow I have off, which is always a pleasant prospect. But my room (well, both of them) is such a fucking tip that I should probably sort it out. And I need to find the ICL student union office to buy Arcadia tickets, so I will probably do that on Saturday.

4. Guides on Tuesday went off pretty well. When we pack the programme as full as possible, we manage to keep more control over them. They finished off their ‘pennies for pencils’ things (to raise money for Guides in the Ukraine, where a bunch of people are going in the summer to run camps for the Guides there), and then we were preparing things for the Brownie meeting next week. I had them cutting out templates for little boxes for the Brownies to make and decorate (have to find out how many we’ll be having, and check that we have glue etc – fortunately discovered a stash of sticky-back felt in the cupboard, so we can use that to decorate, though I still want to get some sparkly bits as well), Hannah taught them lashing to pass on to the Brownies, and Keira had them making up questions for a running quiz. All the Guides managed pretty well, though L got sent out during notices for being disruptive. M was uber-keen as usual, though Hannah had to tell her off for trying to take over when someone else was doing the lashing. N seemed to actually be back at her normal self, which was a nice change. O also seems to be quite keen (she’s the one who’s just come up from Brownies), though she’s still quite shy about joining in with the others. We sang Thunderation, which they all enjoyed, and we will do it with the Brownies next week. Yoicks. I do love Guides, even though it’s a bit hard work.

5. Jericho was on last night, so it is downloading away. *g* I rang Katie this morning to ask her to find a DL, but she had beaten me to it. The girl’s a downloading guru. But yes, I am hoping for more Stimi. It is my Jericho OTP. Oh, and I was amused and a little bewildered to discover that my Jericho ‘fic’ (yes, that would be the one that was about three lines long) managed to find its way onto the Jericho news comm, espesh when, unusually for me, I had not pimped it anywhere (what with it being about three lines long and not particularly good). Huh.

6. I am reading a very interesting book at the moment, called Confederates in the Attic, about Southern attitudes to the Civil War (sorry, War Between the States or even War of Northern Aggression *g*), which I would highly recommend. Obviously when it comes to the more fact-based reasons behind the war (slavery, essentially), you kind of have to go with the Union on that one, but in terms of the principles of state power over federal power, it’s quite interesting to look at the dynamic there: I remember reading in a Bill Bryson book once about how the whole union of states thing was a bit woolly at first (nobody was particularly keen about signing the constitution, frex), and it’s interesting to consider that the states in the 1860s didn’t necessarily think of themselves first and foremost as ‘American’, and more ‘Carolinian’, or whatever. I think it would be worthwhile researching further, and I may do so.

7. Rah. I always reach my seventh thing and find I have nothing else to say. We had lasagna leftovers last night. Yum. Buzzcocks was very funny.

Ah, more pseudo-philosophical ramblings...

Further to my earlier musings, is it possible to have an objective world at all? If every person experiences life through their own lenses, making it uniquely their own and not shared with any other, is there such a thing as ‘the world’? Because who would be aware of it? If no one can see it (and I use ‘see’ loosely), can it be said to exist, or is just a theoretical construct to bring together otherwise separate individuals? You can walk part someone on the road, but if no-one notices, it has not happened. You do not notice, so it is not part of your world. He has not noticed so it is not part of his. If there is no-one else to record it, then it cannot be said to have happened.

Is it possibly that such a thing as the Truth exists, independently of any individuals?

I have no idea why I wrote this. I think it was in reaction to some of the stuff written in earlier years which just had no relevance to me personally.

( rant/essay about how ideals of female independence etc cannot account for modern fans of the Chalet School )