bee feast

It seems more human now. Smiling missing-person pictures splashed all over the place. Struggle to get bodies from underneath King's Cross, flowers piling up. Things are only just sinking in really when I thought I'd grasped it. And there aren't words for it all. I am filled with sorrow and bewilderment that people are capable of this.

It's been one fucker of a week. Even before the attack it was quite a tense and draining few days - the G8 summit, the Olympic faffery. Personally in my own little corner I'm mired in indecision, everything muffled and stifled by mood when I would very much like to be appreciating being alive. Fling open the doors and wait for procrastination to shuffle in in its tatty slippers. Go grey. Squander glorious potential. Etc. But I should get it tofuckingether. I wasn't directly affected by this, thank secular deity, but of course it demonstrates and brings home the rotten fragility of life and I almost feel a responsibility to refrain from being stuck.

Poor London. Poor people. I'm at a loss.

It's That Woman again. I feel quite defensive. Her determination to censor anyone with a view at any sort of angle to her own on her site, and her excruciating puffed-up I-know-my-rights pride in that debate-stifling stance, takes precedence over everything, even showing an ounce of sympathy for London. It's all Just About America, isn't it?

This is my comment policy, which will be updated as the need arises:

1) Do not call me names! Please don’t offend or insult the blog hostess. If I get into specifics, this post would never end. Just use common sense. Don’t imply or state that I’m stupid, for example. Don’t call me a puppet or mouthpiece of white conservatives. And if you call my argument stupid, you must explain why.

Don’t call other commenters names, either. Attack the argument, not the person.

2) I am queen of www.lashawnbarber.com because this is my weblog. I pay for the hosting and I make the rules.

You have no First Amendment rights on this blog. My right to free speech is protected on this site, not yours.

Mini-civics lesson: The First Amendment restricts government, not private citizens, from infringing on your right to free speech. On this blog, your speech is a privilege. On your blog, your speech is a right. Learn the distinction. [Right, and we're not allowed to imply that you're stupid. As if it's clear on your site how to post comments anyway - unless that's meant to weed out the stupid people. Maybe it's just that none may enter the hallow'd halls. Where do ya get off, lady? A?]

3) No profanity or quasi-profanity, such as the vulgar reference to urination, pi**. I hate that word. [What, piss, 'La' Shawn? Piss? Does it really piss you off like a big pissing pisser? Piss pissy piss piss piss.]

4) Stay on-topic. While I won’t delete off-topic comments, I prefer they be relevant to the post. If you have an off-topic question or issue, e-mail me.

5) I reserve the right to edit or delete any comment for any reason. If I edit your comment, most of the time I’ll add a notation, such as “Edited by the Admin” or “Nice try, troll!”

6) You get one warning before you are banned, although there are exceptions (If I really like you, you’ll get three warnings.). Being banned from my domain means your ISP is blocked from accessing the entire site.

7) I prefer real names, but if you are anonymous or use an alias for privacy, that’s OK (As if I’d know anyway, right?).

8) Trackbacks leading to offensive posts where I’m the subject will be deleted.

I'm so weary of this kind of belligerence and sanctimony (yes, of course she's got the right to delete stuff but really, if you're going to be like that why bother allowing comments at all? Why not just take down your entire blog and replace it with I AM SO GREEAAAAT in big letters made out of lewd naked people? Some of America is so hung up on the very idea of its Rights, and trumpets so loud and long about them, that it becomes deaf to the quiet shuffling out of the back door of the actual substance of those rights.). Any minute now I'm going to plead "why can't we All Just Get Along?". I should really avoid looking up right-wing froth at this juncture. Never ceases to amaze me, though, the scrap-happy mentality of them - always accusing weedy liberals of looking at their bird or spilling their pint. They are tireless, where libs by definition get tired and clutch their brow and succumb to their sense of horror at the way things are. The right will always win much of the time just because winning is important to them in and of itself. They're the chest-beating jocks all padded up and bellowing. But I'd rather be on the side of the fucking human beings, thanks. Give me my wire-framed spectacles and my Atari t-shirt and my desire to do no harm.

Go ahead and delete this kind of thing from your precious, precious forum of Chrissjunn rectitude, girlie, but it's still here and it's still pissed off with the likes of you. Unworthy as you are of our righteous PISS. But it's beneath me to say so, and the best option is merely to ignore you, or stick a flower down the barrel of your rifle and smile.

The Thing sustained a certain degree of righteous subscriber-bile for this - none of it was mine (neither the satire nor the bile) but I was proud of 'em (the satirists, not the bilious). It's veering towards the uncomfortable but I think it's crucially important to make light of terrorism, to trivialise it, to point and laugh at it. If you take it 100% seriously you elevate it to the position of some kind of lurking deity, which is what they want you to do. They want you on your knees before the totem of Filled Trouser. It may be unpalatable to poke fun because your instinct is to let the power of it wash over you and make you feel helpless, and look to the people in power to sort it out. But you must do it. You must smirk at it and dismiss it as less of a worry than the latest Hall's-Mentholyptus-gives-you-cancer scare. That segues into the showing of no fear which is genuinely and honestly half the battle. You respect the dead - you don't respect the people who killed them.

I don't suppose I'll have to worry about falling foul of terrorism in London, because as soon as I mention that I'm still planning to move back, my mum will probably kill me.

P's cat wasn't there when I went to feed her. I keep hearing vicious cat fighting screams in the middle of the night - I think the local cats who were here first bully her. She's only little. And very needy and whingey. I'm a bit worried.

London death toll has topped 50. So much being said about it that I hardly want to add anything. It is very sad. It will be sadder when it starts to get used as a stick to beat the populace with, liberties being snatched away to degrees vastly inappropriate given the actual level of threat. Such attacks are calculated to reverberate long after they occur - the fear and paranoia that follows one is part of the attack itself, using people's own reactions against themselves to hurt them for months and years afterwards. So it seems that the logical thing to do is refuse to be afraid, not be daunted. That cancels out at least a portion of the damage.

And yes, now I want to go back more than ever, and I'm not even entirely sure why. Not being there yesterday was like not being with a family member at a bad time. I don't think I would feel any less safe than I did before - these things (as a couple of sensible but drowned-out voices have piped up in the last 48 hours) can and do happen anywhere, at any time, and there's no sense in worrying about it. There is no sense. Perhaps if I'd been there yesterday I'd feel differently, although boy howdy, I developed a real plane phobia after 9/11, flinching whenever I saw one fly overhead, so there's little rationale either way.

I do hope London can absorb this impact and not go off its head. Given the brilliant level-headedness of the crowds and the walking wounded I'd think it's possible, but it's the rest of the country I'm worried about. Charles Clarke is poised to stuff ID cards back up the nation's nose, with the shrugging attitude that although they may not help significantly in the fight against terror, they Won't Do Any Harm. Get fucked, Fungus. Bush is just bouncing up and down in subverted delight that he's got a fresh reason to get bellicose and roll out some shiny new War on Terror posters. Never seen before such a crystalline contrast between the quiet dignity of citizens and the noisy indignity of politicians.

In other news, Boz is leaving Moz. Can't really blame him, I suppose, but Morrissey has always exhibited the kind of cuntishness I can admire. He's like. . .me taken to my ultimate conclusion, if I never held anything back or wondered if perhaps not or didn't try to at least suffer some fools gladly some of the time. Hee hee. It's almost like he is the way he is so that the rest of us don't have to be. But I think he's also more complicated than that, and refuses absolutely to disclose the mysteries of himself to anyone. Like, anyone at all. He is self-contained. And I'm sure he has the odd personality disorder scattered about, but he's got something of the prototype about him and seems to be content, and Right with himself. Which is to be admired, dammit. And he has written some of the most wonderful music and I am suspicious of people who have that violent spitting hatred for him.

They're grateful for their hatred, though, they enjoy it in the way you always enjoy hating people you have not a chink of uncertainty or ambiguity about the pure uncut bastardness of. I have one of those in my life and I continue to hate him although I haven't seen him in some years; I continue even in the knowledge that it would please him immensely to know that I still hate him. I just love hating him. Rarely is something so simple. I wish I could say I've ever loved someone for as long and as directly and purely as I hate this person - who I never loved, by the way, in case you were heading in that direction although we were friendly enough for some time. There's a woman I almost hate to the same degree but that's more complicated, and she certainly hates herself enough for the world which takes some of the steam out of it.

I did used to go along with the idea that hate is a horrible corrosive thing that only hurts the person doing the hating, and I suppose ultimately it's true but it's like a good drug, you know it's doing you a certain degree of damage but oooohboy it's worth it. I've had to get rid of some of it because it was choking me, but I think I'm free to dabble in casual hatred these days. I can stop any time I want. No, really. But I don't want to. I donwanna.

I hate Bush, genuinely, and I don't want to because it troubles me a lot, but he's there and I can't have any other feeling for him. I don't hate Blair. Blair at least has good intentions buried somewhere under the hopeless toadying and the Christian nonsense. Bush I just don't think cares at all for anyone except Bush and Mrs Bush and Daddy Bush and all the little Bushes. There is something genuinely sociopathic about him. I think this is why he has been mistaken for a gormless idiot (dangerous misconception, and he's gone a good long way on it) - it's not that he is stupid, he just doesn't care about word order and factual content and good oratory and even how he comes across, because his ego has transcended any need to pander to these. It's an amazing psychological triumph, really. He occupies some position of ultimate watertight security. Politicians have to be hard but he is different. His carelessness about his own presentation to the world suggests a particularly deep level of unconcern with everything that is outside himself - he does not care who lives or dies. He frightens and angers me, very much.

Actually I do succeed in feeling genuine hate for various people after the briefest of interactions, but that's usually a kind of wounded helpless hatred after I perceive someone has bashed me. That's unpleasant. But I'm not sure I can avoid it altogether. I'm very New York cabbie about that. Swear, honk, swerve, go about your day, avoid aggravating the ulcer unduly.

I spoke to the Keyboard Player yesterday, in the course of phoning to check London people were OK. We were best friends for some time and then drifted into nowhere, total silence for at least two years. Last time I saw him was at the Drummer's funeral which was 2001 or something - that was a real BBC drama with everyone realising Things Just Weren't The Same And Would Never Be Again. It was obvious that we were no longer to each other what we had been, but unlike me he was never going to get soppy about it. I do believe people have a shelf-life with each other, and just because something dissolves within two years or five or within six months it does not invalidate it; you have to concede to the natural life of any relationship or risk making a mockery of it by stretching it beyond its limit. You have to be brave and sniffle and let people vanish with grace from your life. I'm usually pretty good at this but admit to failure with KP. It's been lingering comatose and dribbling for a disgraceful age. And it's all me, too - I'm sure he never gives me a second thought.

It was nice to hear him, anyway, grumpy arse as always. He was in Bath. "I'm still moving back to London," I said.

"Why? It's a shithole."

That's the spirit.

The Drummer dropped dead with a brain tumour aged 26. Poor fucker. He was a sweetheart. At least he didn't know anything about it. If they'd found it, they would have had to tell him it was inoperable.

Come to think of it, I had to struggle not to clonk the Guitarist on his fat stupid head at the funeral party. But I wasn't alone in that, so maybe I'm not entirely eaten up with hatred.

Hmm.

Kind of envy Morrissey, or at least my idea of him. Maybe true happiness lies in being able to face, and embrace, your inner Cunt.

is my town. And I am proud of it and wish I was there.

I hope there isn't going to be some hideous, frightening surge of toxic patriotism that leads to anyone in a turban being beaten in the street, but I don't think there will be. Not in the American sense - we are too reserved, and this is as it should be.

The timing was perfect in the sense that it destroyed the ecstatic we-won mood, made everyone think that there's going to be seven years of this and of course disrupted the G8 summit, but given that the 60th anniversary of WWII is just around the corner. . .a resounding doh is in order. Londoners are going to suddenly feel part of this noble line of cheerful, stoic survivors and will party like nuts.

I think they all have the right to get a bit soppy in the next couple of weeks. It is a great place. People will be back on the tube tomorrow and will soon be grumbling about delays on the Northern line just like normal.

Everyone I know seems to be OK. I'm hoping the death toll stays under 100 - of course any at all is bad enough but it could have been so very much worse.

I hope there's some evidence of at least some thought beyond "kill 'em all" after this - don't hold out much hope, and I'm not sure that anything could be done to avoid it happening again. I hope they don't just do something which will erode civil liberties but not make anyone any safer, just to be seen to be doing something.

I hope Bush doesn't expect any more favours.

So pensive. He probably doesn't know that he can't actually think and all he has is a complex network of instinct that offers some approximation of what we know as 'thought'. Lucky swine.

Even he is bored of having his picture taken now.

London's got the Olympics. I'm fairly unimpressed - I do wonder if Stratford would ever have seen any development were it not for this. This way the government gets to look awfully charitable. I think the poignant meaningful world-stage power-and-glory stuff that the government and media will be able to dine out on will mask an awful lot of actual headache for ordinary people, who will only benefit in patches, but we'll see. I don't like the looming inevitability of it, though, no siree. And try as I might I cannot give a good goddamn about international sport.

I just had an email from an exasperated and, by the sounds of it, very young blogger whose boyfriend is picking at her English. Asked me to help her, just once, please. And provided me with a lengthy extract for me to look at. I told her that unfortunately I can't proof stuff for free, but if her boyfriend is nitpicking, she ought to pick at some things she thinks he isn't good at. She was grateful. And so was I, really. I mean, I'd like some actual work, please, but it made me grin.

Watched 'The Jacket' this evening. Flawed and messy but sweet and disturbing and stylish, which unusual combo makes it worth anyone's while. Keira Knightley actually did some acting, although a lot of it still consisted of her waving her lips about. She is almost too much of a Face to be an actress, or even a model. She looks like she should be some sort of statue on permanent display somewhere. I was mostly transfixed by Adrien Brody however, who I vaguely noted as stunning in 'Summer of Sam' but I'd forgotten. . .my, how beautiful. I'm happy that he's as famous as he is, because although he had to earn it by actually having talent and not a pretty face, he might possibly do a bit of yer old challenging of them pesky conventionalstandardsofbeauty. Made me remember that these apply to men at least to some degree as they do to women, although men get an awful lot more rope in that respect. It's the other side of what I thought when I saw Danny Bhoy the other week - I could only think that he would never have got as far as he has on that rather well-trodden material and amiable but forgettable delivery were it not for his cute pop-starry appearance. I'd like to think - or would I? - that this sort of prettyocracy is a modern product of decadent society etc etc but I'm afraid in this case there is some kind of evolutionary basis to it. Even features = suggestion of good genes = natural rise to top of any given heap. But then there is always room, highly developed as we are, to find value and delight in the non-standard. See also: unnerving and unhealthy uniformity of pedigrees vs. boundless diversity and robustness of mutts.

So it's all well and good to admire the apposite features of whoever and feel the pleasure of aesthetic harmony as well as the nice little lurch of mild lust, but an interesting face. . .hell, I don't think I could look at Brody's face with its huge wonky nose and too-close-together eyes and not-quite-sensual lips for a prolonged period without weeping. Man's a fucking angel.

Anyway.

And, like, this incredibly luscious body that really defies description.

Anyway.

I flinch not from spiders of any size or speed, I have formed close relationships with snakes rats and large intimidating dogs, but I have a full-body-tremor shrieking-fit terror of craneflies. It's a genuine phobia. It's not as bad as it was, but still the sight of one tap-dancing across a wall makes me start to shake and start swearing. The way they move in twenty directions at once, and the way you can never hit them and their endless legs and the whirring of their wings - I almost wallow in how nightmarish and alien they are.

So one appeared in the study window this afternoon, doing its crazed insane alien tippy-tappy spindly-bounce thing. I went at it with a rolled-up Private Eye, which flimsy fading satirical publication was hopelessly inadequate to the task, and the tangled insectoid fled. I stared at the carpet for some moments until my eyes started to sting. I tried to encourage the dog to hunt it. I managed to get on with something until it reappeared, mostly undamaged, dancing the dance of unspeakable horror on the pane. I clamped a glass over it and watched it move around frantically inside, trying to desensitise myself, as seemed like a good idea.

I left it there while I went out. When I looked at it some hours later it had lost a few joints of one leg. I had a closer look, which I would never have been able to do a few years ago. It had a long head like a seahorse, tiny feelers underneath and fringed antenna on top. This disproportionate armoured thorax. It still didn't look organic, it looked like something man-made although its movements now did approach the animal-like.



I'm already too sensitive to the world. I'm exhausted by feeling for people and things constantly. I can't afford to diversify into insect life - not any further than bees, for which I ache when I find them twitching and waving on the ground. And certainly not as far as my least favourite creature in the world. No. But I started to get a bit uncomfortable watching this thing in its little glass prison.

I would normally have let it die a slow lingering death but for some reason I decided to let it go. Slid a card underneath, carried it into the backyard, made flinging gesture, scuttled back indoors. It should know that if it comes back into the house it will get cruelly hairsprayed to death.

There's not much that isn't beautiful, really. And it's true, it's knackering.


Look how beautiful this thing is. I'm nothing if not consistent. This is a vulture. It is bald because its lot in life is to shove its head inside fly-blown carcasses on African plains. And I like to look at it.


And this thing. An unpronounceable eagle with fierce red beak.


And a heart of vultures.

I haven't got as far as taking pictures of dead ones yet, but give me time, and Adrien Brody.

Amazing, violent gold-and-pink sunset through pissing rain. I'd take a picture but have no batteries.

I flew a harris hawk yesterday, kinda. It was lovely. This whole new-experience thing is great if a bit expensive overall. I'll have to scale it down. Perhaps I should buy an eyelash-curler. Never curled my eyelashes before.

Everyone living is a cunt except for the person who will shortly be bringing me tasty Chinese food, providing they find the house OK, otherwise they too are a cunt.

Alright, so not everyone living. George W. Bush is, though. He was interviewed by Trevor McDonald and it was broadcast tonight and the vacant couldn't-give-a-shit complacency of the man was too much for me to bear.

Funny how I was one of those people who could not stand the sound or sight of the word 'cunt' a few years ago. It offended me in some visceral instinctive way. Now I'm almost as fond of it as 'fuck'. But it must be used sparingly. And not shouted in public.

Shrivelling. Nothing to add.