moâ

(post-dated entry)

LiveJournal is getting on my tits, big-time, so this is to be my new abode, for good I believe.

The orange and grey scheme will need some getting used to.

Anyhow - if we already know each other, do please come in, the living room is over here, just step over the nekkid man lying down over here - do be careful with those stillettoes, he doesn't like needle-play - good. The booze is on its way, make yourself at home!

If we aren't yet acquainted, hello! Who are you, do you prefer blonds or brunettes, what are your views on postmodern literature, do you want to come in for a chat - mind the nekkid man, yes, he's too exhausted to get up and greet your properly. Let me offer you a drink - so, who did you say you were? Do you want to be added to the f-list?

...there are achievements so great in their magnitude, so daringly tethering over the furthermost reaches of the scary Unknown, of such an overbearing and gut-wrenching hyperbolic value it would be a crime to confine them to one's own memory when they weep with the need to be shouted over the rooftops.

So I shall not keep to the modest silence that befits me so well.

I am wrapping Xmas presents.

And I am doing so sober.



Please, please do mind the crashing waves of applause that cannot but accompany such a statement. I wouldn't want you to be deafened.

I'll start with how I'm fully aware of my own Christian bias, and I do speak as someone who fell in love with Switzerland some time ago.

But honestly, this anti-Swiss pathetic drivel is getting on my nerves.


First, it is bad, baaad, baaaaaad manners to criticise democracy. And dangerous too. If you start talking of "the people" in that high-handed, butter won't melt in my mouth, poseur-intellectual way, and yes, I'm thinking of you, Quatremer, you had better have the blond hair and impeccable physique that goes with it. Otherwise we'll just have to conclude you're playing right in the hands of the populists you so affect to despise. Sovereignty of the people means that idiots vote too. Get over it. Or do you believe it makes me a demagogue to point out that you share this distaste for our political system with a good many bludge marks on our history books.

You know, I wish we had direct democracy everywhere. I know, not practical, not in a large circumscription, not in places where it is not in our political culture to do so. But there is something so inherently beautiful in this shared communion with fellow-citizens of varied creeds, backgrounds, educational levels, and more recently, genders, that even voicing your objections makes me froth in the mouth with bilious anger. If thinking that one ballot per person, one vote per issue, is not the Right way to decide how a community should manage itself, there is really nothing more I can say or do.

Now, minarets in specific. Calling to prayer is already forbidden in Switzerland, so forbidding minarets is something else - coming from an ideological POV rather than from a practical one. It means that islam shouldn't be allowed into public space. It is not an attempt against freedom of religion - no one banned the belonging to, nor the practising of, islam. It means, if you're muslim, keep it outside of the public sphere.

Now that is anathema to our liberal little multicultural minds. Surely different communities should be allowed equal space in the public arena, don't we all think.

Sure, xenophobes (westerners or otherwise) think the exact opposite - that the public sphere should be reserved to their own more or less mainstream culture and that expressions of difference, especially when foreign, should be limited or banned. I have no doubt the Swiss vote was in good part UDC-led too.

But just because your enemy thinks something, you shouldn't automatically adopt the opposite stance. Blocher was not alone on this either. Not so long ago, Europe was under a strict moral codex imposed by various Christian religious authorities. Even now there are victims of the Catholic church's various abuses who are struggling to obtain justice as secular authorities do not yet possess the strength to oppose it fully when it errs. The current semi-secularist status quo is not sufficiently well-established into our culture that we can let it get threatened by a religion no better than Christianity when it comes to imposing itself into the public sphere to the detriment of laicity. The difference between the two being that Christianity is thought to be saying its last prayers while Islam is perceived (rightly or not) to be gaining followers - while the threat posed by the former is therefore known and limited, the perceived threat from the latter is higher.

Now the Swiss also don't think like us, in that, as a result of our watered-down, indirect democracy, we're very much stop and go. An issue is brought up by spin doctors when elections come along, thoroughly muddled with a great many other issues at hand, and then promptly forgotten post-elections. If we were to discuss minarets, at the favour of, perhaps, a slow news day during election time, all parties would pledge Something. The elected party would then implement it, and we would all move on swiftly - another issue would then dominate the next election, something as important as, perhaps, should bad dogs be put down, or should old people really be ignored when they get cancer, or, why do pregnant teenagers get free houses when they should really be sectioneed?

The Swiss, on the other hand, debate things all the time. They don't have electoral agendas or deadlines, because each issue gets its own vote. Don't give a damn? Don't vote. Feel strongly about something? Gather all your friends, and if there are enough of you, there will be a vote. And equally, you strongly disagree about something (like, no doubt, the Muslim community currently does)? Well, it won't do any good to get all excited, because those people who just voted against your pet idea? Well, they might well be your allies in the next vote, or perhaps the one after that. You don't have political enemies in Switzerland, you have discussion partners you debate with all the fucking time. Swiss children aren't taught to go back home do their homework. They're taught to stay at school in a study group and do group homework assignments. The first thing about being Swiss is that you don't get hot in the head, you don't disrespect you fellow citizens, and you argue and argue and argue your case until everyone agrees.

Because in a nation that is so strongly decentralised, with long-standing mistrust between the four different language communities, between Catholics and Protestants, between people from your canton and people from all the other cantons, between people of Swiss descent and people whose Swiss-ness was more recently acquired*, the one value that holds everything else together is consensus. There are no moves forward until everything has been discussed to the point where saliva gets scarce, until everyone agrees to change. That's why women didn't get to vote until as late as 1975 is some cantons. That's why it's taken them bloody ages to join the UN. That's why they're still not in the EU despite being a perfect miniature, Alpine replica of the Union. That's why minarets aren't allowed in their public sphere. Because those ideas are not (yet) part of the consensus.

And you know what? If we EU citizens had stopped for a minute and learned from the Swiss, we might not have landed ourselves in the mess we're currently in.


(BTW - Welcome to the world, Lisbon. May the birthing pains have been worth it.)


* oh yeah, Switzerland has one of the highest proportion (20%) of non-national residents in the world. So if you're thinking insular, narrow-minded and xenophobic... think again.

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough?currentPage=all

à lire jusqu'à la fin... les Ricains découvrent le concept du médecin généraliste, sonnez trompettes!

after another lovely 14-hour day.

I love home.

/braindead

http://www.lovehoney.co.uk/sexmap/uk.html

kleio_caissa, I am seriously impressed. Seriously. And you don't even live there full-time any more!

And Expat will be moving to Reading soon, btw. He is in a red spot even now. Hm. Me, on the other hand? Pale yellow...

Also: Aberystwyth? O RLY?

(It's been too long since I've pointlessly annoyed people)

When the death penalty was abolished in France (before I was born...) a majority of voters were against it. It was a political gamble to put it on the agenda (annoying the electorate vs. gaining votes by showing one had deep humanist convictions that aren't influenced by vote-gathering) but it worked. Today, a majority of French voters support the abolition of the death penalty - showing that it's very much a cultural issue that my be swayed by the general mores.

Perhaps it is because none of my compatriots were led to the Veuve Patibulaire in my lifetime that I am influenced by the maintream opinions of my generation: I however cannot comprehend how it is even possible to support the death penalty.

Miscarriages of justice do occur. Not often, but they happen. Sending an innocent to prison to pray for new evidence to be discovered whilst they get raped by inmates is hardly compassionate, but does seem a better alternative than giving them a comprehensive and final haircut.

But even if you do think a swift death is preferable to the long prison ordeal, a death sentence is murder. It is murder carried out by society as a whole, embodied by an independent institution, but it is murder nonetheless. It is one step better than taking justice in your own hands as it does grant both parties a right to make their case, and robs the punishment of some of the hot anger involved, but killing someone = murder, no matter how you institutionalise and attempt to justify it. If you live in a country that does have the death penalty - those jurors are selected by chance. Not hand-picked, not elected. That means it could be you. That means they represent you. That means the decision they take is yours. That means that when they send someone to the chair, you have killed that someone too. When you go to sleep at night, you know that you share responsibility for the murder of another human being. When you wake up, you know that today you may be murdering another human being by proxy. How you can square that with your conscience is utterly and completely beyond my comprehension.

But people who do wake up at the crack of down to find themselves facing a one-way window and a threatening-looking needle are monsters, you say. They're dangerous, they've done horrible things, their DNA was all over the victim's chopped up body parts, they'll be doing it again, they have to be removed from society for society's sake, etc.

No.

What some people have done or do is truly horrible and indeed nigh-impossible to understand for the overwhelming majority of us. Blasting up a plane, raping, or any of those crimes who are invoked to justify the death penalty are so glaring in their inhumanity that they do make us forget what humanity is. They set the perpetrators apart from the rest of us by the sheer horror of the deed. When facing their cruelty, their violence and the irrevocable finality of their actions, we feel helpless. How could that happen? How could we have let that happen, in our town, country, planet? But there is no going back in time to avoid the tragedy, and nothing we can do can guarantee its not happening again either. The only venue left to do something about it is to punish the culprit, and it is easy to vent all the frustration and pent-up disgust in that punishment.

But that's the crux of the argument. The inhumanity of the crime or indeed of the criminal does not mean we should stoop to their level. On the contrary, if a murderer manages to make the rest of us murder him (or her), they'll have won - they'll have made murder acceptable! The very same argument goes for compassionate shortening of sentences too - it was right to release the Lockerbie bomber. It is the ultimate proof of humanity and wisdom - promoting humanity and compassion in the face of evil is the surest way to defeat evil as it means we are stronger, fairer and undefeated in the face of all the horrors of the world.

Countries that countenance the death penalty, on the other hand, are barbaric. Extradition towards these countries should be banned, as neither their justice systems nor their society can be trusted, and their leaders should prepare to face The Hague someday. They stand last among nations: there are repellent criminals everywhere, but a country full of silent, everyday murderers by consensus is more loathsome than all of them put together.

	week 1		week 2		week 3		week 4
	week 5		week 6		week 7	</div>	week 8
	week 9		week 10		week 11		week 12

...to fall off a bike and whip myself in the eye.

Not simultaneously, I hasten to add.

I also discovered this little gem so it's not all lost.

First chapter here, follow the links or the tag for all 15 chapters.

Warnings: it's still a WIP

It's hard to describe why I love it so much. The writing's good, the setting is excellent, and the execution is just masterful. In an alternative universe, the heir to one kingdom becomes the slave to the heir of their sworn enemies. There is a lot of court politics, of underlying tension, of deceit and manipulation. No slash so far, but I think it's better this way - these characters behave like real people, they have many other priorities than sex. And it's the best rendering of two different cultures in fic I have ever read.

Go, read, review.

Abstinence cures obesity!

My parcel is 2,1 kg, which means the postman was quite offended at my having even presumed to present him with it. Anything over two kilos, my friends, is not kosher, and not only because metrics are evil and our using it a sure sign the country is going to the dogs: anything with a suspicion of being more than 2kgs goes to Parcel Force.

Parcel Force being Royal Mail under another name, but it's at the other end of town.

So I walked, had my 2,1 kg parcel weighted, measured (again, in metrics. Tsks.) and had to spell every fucking word of the address to a Parcel Force member of staff who thus entered in into the Computer, laboriously, with two fingers, before taking my vital details (name, first name, mother's maiden name, post code, contact telephone number - daytime + after hours - width of big toe, date of birth, number of teenage pregnancies, triplicate of my I'm no terrorist, they're no bomb in that parcel certificate etc.). It resulted that sending it economy, guaranteed delivery within 46 days, would have cost me £45,17. You can of course get it there more quickly, but that's more expensive.

I went glurbps and thanks but no thanks. The French postal system has just regained a little bit of my esteem. They treat you like shit, but they at least they don't act like you're an idiot.

My parcel is going to be opened, split into two 1,05 kg parcels, and sent Royal Mail.

They can make as tiresome as they want to, but I'll beat them at their own game. Bastards.

On other news, we're all going to die!!! (swine flu) Details here: http://betedejour.blogspot.com/2009/07/swine-flu-unmasked-its-war.html

They smell and taste good but look awful, so probably won't be that big a success.

It doesn't matter, because leftovers = more for meeeeeee.

Am having second thoughts about returning the egg whisker. It did make good pancake dough and would perhaps be more efficient if used in more suitable container? My world is an abyss of critical doubt, perpetual second thoughts and endless tergiversations. (or is it????)

*iz spending quality time with seam-ripper*

Got a clubcard.

Send help!

Something I will never ever wrap my head around is how the English relate to words.

The French way of doing things, which I have in the past mistakenly perceived as universal, is to use words as a vehicle to thought. They can relay the mind of the speaker and convey anything from lightness to poetry to hate to laughter to actual rational conceptual elaboration. Discussing a word as of itself has no meaning but that of the idea it carries. "Idiot" is an insult only because it means the speaker holds the intellect of the referant in low regard; were it to be used in a context that implies this is not the case ("je t'écris, mon grand idiot, pour te dire que je ne pense plus qu'à toi..."), it would loose its pejorative meaning.

Not so for the English. It's socially unacceptable to say fuck, not because the action it refers to is generally thought to be unpalatable (though, the English being English, this is a possibility one shouldn't be too hasty to dismiss), but because the word itself is considered to be intolerable.

Now strong language isn't exactly polite in French either. But there's a major difference here. In French, a foul mouth indicates bad manners, a lower social class, or a very relaxed atmosphere. Here, it's anathema - you can even get movies rated as unappropriate for under 18s if too many of the characters say fuck too often. Sorry, if the F-word pops up too often (even writing it is Streng Verboten, you see - that you and I both know exactly what is meant by the capital and decapitated F- is irrelevant).

And the F word is not alone, no. You also have the C word, and the N word - but that's fine, because their pee-see opposites are also encapsulated in a nifty abbreviation. And yet that is not enough, and, when naming them becomes too dangerous, like a Dark spell that would take effect as soon as Voldemort's capital Vee is said aloud, you can still refer to them as four-letter words. To their defense, it does also cover the dangerous and oh so offensive cock and twat, piss and puke, kink and shag, and even the downright revolutionary arse.

Fine, thought I. Not all of us are capable of Rabelaisian explosions of semantic joy. If the English want to castrate their language and rob it of its most salient points, I can adapt: if they don't want me to say fuck, I won't. When in Rome, stick your fingers in the back of your throat mid-meal to get ready for the rest of the festivities.

But what I can't begin to comprehend is how the reverse is also true: a debasing insult, when it is voiced in politically correct terms, is totally acceptable here. My charming co-worker's favourite expression is the title of this post. What is, to my narrow French mind, a homophobic slur that clearly doesn't belong to an office environment is, to her, the cool phrase to say something's worthy of her contempt.

I wonder why she doesn't add in the same tone of voice, oh that's so ethnically diverse, or oh that's so disabled.

A brand of porn that's twice as shameful and dirty as the usual kind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQF0ZuL8vus&feature=player_embedded

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x941u6_le-buzz-du-ministre_fun

if you promise to keep a straight face.

It only took me five tries to park my car. On the road, just near the pavement, no others cars in front or behind, no fancy moves.
And the bit you're not allowed to find funny, not even one little bit? I was so concentrated on not hitting the curb and yet not parking in the middle of the road that I missed my house and parked in front of the neighbours'.

Dear neighbours, on the off chance you're reading this, I'm awfully sorry but there's no bleeding way I'm moving the thing before tomorrow. You're very welcome to the keys if you want to move it for me.

God I hate cars.

It's v. disappointing. I probably got it wrong.