"I think".
Added to the end of a hell of a lot of statement type announcements.
"The bath is too hot, I think?" - think always has a slight upward, questioning inflection to it.
THe chest doesn't seem to be getting any worse, but no better as yet. I mean.. if we can keep her off antibiotisc I'll be very, very pleased - and at this stage, it feels like it might be getting better of its own accord. A bit.
Collectively cross fingers, please my friends.
The ex has got a sitcom on the telebox at present. So my Dad casually rings up as soon as he finds out, mentioning it, dropping the name. He seemed surprised when I was a little curt in my response to him.
Jaysus, it was 11 years ago! And besides the point, would you mention any of my other ex's to me, *ever*?
Bloody hell.
Another person I used to know a bit has died of cancer. I feel really dreadful about it actually in that she was universally liked as a person yet the only thing I wrote about her was a review of a comedy gig in which she didn't really do very well which therefore came across quite critically. Oh dear. That's horrible. Jeff Green pilloried me about it at the time. It was justifiable, in journalistic terms. But you know - he was sticking up for his mate, who was really nice, which is probably more justifiable than me writing some passing piece in order to be paid uhuh, at that point, £50 a week. Ultimately, journalism about comedy is a load of old bollocks anyway.
She really flowered on the radio though - she was much better in that sort of atmosphere than in front of a standup audience *when she was a less experienced comedian* (ust making that caveat, I hadn't seen her in front of an audience for a long time. I think she probably gave it up, but the confidence radio familiarity would have given her would have helped enormously).
Anyway. It's horrible, and mean and I hope to God she had a gentle exit.
I can't believe that I've actually got new stretchmarks. New! He's so low and just not growing up, which means that he's simply growing OUT. I'm so wide around my bellybutton waist-type circumference that the skin around said button has gone a bit weird. I now have an outy bellybutton. Instead of it all just being flat and slightly too distended and unpleasant around the laporoscopy scar (if I never thought about plastic surgery before, you can bet I have since... ooh, December 11th 2003, I think you'll find).
My left knee is beginning to really knacker now, feeling like it's cracking and splitting, with the pain going down to my ankle. We're going to retrieve the knee support. Hopefully it's tight enough and warm enough (neoprene) that it should keep me going. No.2, you are tooooooo fucking big. or the womb is anyway.
The tiredness has also hit me like a ton of bricks, and I seem to be able to get through about a couple of hours but then need food / water but by the time I get to the end of meetings like that I can't remember words! That's new today.
Only this week in the office, then a week at home. It's too bloody long though. I'm shattered.
God knows what no.2 is going to be like but aaaaaaargh I can barely believe I'm trying to will myself nearer to a birth situation.
Nora watched an episode of Bagpuss for the first time tonight. It was the first one, of course, with the broken ship in a bottle and "There was a ship a sailing" - also featuring, somewhat unexpectedly, topless mermaids.
I got really choked up! The theme tune is very plangent, and I remembered all of a sudden just how much I loved it when I was little. And here was Nory, seeing it for the first time ever.
Awwwww.
Another one of those crash and burn days today. Woke up with tonsils like chopped liver.
Still went to work for a while though.
Sprog has taken to sitting most often in a sort of sump at the frontright down the bottom (not that internal either, so it's causing a sort of "carrier bag" effect), and good GOD he's putting on weight so fast now that my back / legs, etc are really having difficulty keeping up. thought I'd pulled a muscle on the rght side of my pelvis today but was just very painful!
Had an ante-natal at the hosp today. The first thing the midwife said was "You are large aren't you".
Just trying to explain just how fricken huge I am. I'm not making this up.
I actually look quite a lot like a weeble, bit with the top half of the belly sort of sliced out almost in a right angle. Everything is low slung and heeeeeeeeeaaaaavy. There's a lass at work who is at least a week or more pregnant than I am, who looks approx 2/3ds the size.
And a while month of baby growth to go. What joy! Anyway. My back exercises (which consist of "hold your stomach in like you did when you were 21 and on the pull") has paid incredible dividends. My back is *still* not S shaped. despite severe provocation.
Bed now. Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
There was this "Baby drought" news over the weekend.
I didn't know, honest! Anyway, refer back to my wiffle slightly lower down this page for the completely uninformed version.
David Irving gaoled for three years.
His solicitor was quoted in a previous Beeb article as saying (and I misquote probably) "he's not a dangerous man, he's an old historian"... or words to that effect.
No, he is dangerous. his books are used by misinformed and stupid neo nazi's across the world to justify anti-semitism. His books help rabid pro-zionists to argue that the threats against the Jewish people are out of control, increasing paranoia and a sense of threat. He is not only a liar, but an evil liar.
Now. His books remain published, and the damage of his appalling career has been long done. Does 3 years in the nick undo that damage? Not At All. Does some kind of bookburning exercise seem justified? Good God no.
So how could this man's disgraceful lies and obscene justification of the Nazi war machine be balanced? the sad story is that it can't be. Making irving state in public that he was wrong is also not enough.
If he could be made to appear publicly in every country in which he has given speeches in the past, and a televised apology for his lies then... then? Neo nazi's would be indignant that he was forced to "lie" by the Jewish conspiracy machine or some such bullshit.
..and so the three years in prison will also be used as a flag of martyredom by the morons.
I don't really know what the answer is. I think we really just had to live with it and argue articulately and well against such awfulness, rather than jailing it.
Stephen Fry's script was too twee.
Great news for Brokeback mountain fans though - nearly all the major awards. Funnyy picture of Jake Gyllenhall there, trying to look serious but happy, considering he was a complete goofball in his speechifying.
Heath Ledger didn't get it though, and lost out to Truman Capote. It's a shame in a sense. Sw it again the other night with a mate whose reaction to the film I thought was as sledgehammer as my own - so thought wouldn't mind reviewing it again. Ledger's performance came across far more second time. Little things he did early in the film that when you know his character, make a lot more sense second time around.
I thought I might be able to watch the film and enjoy the terchnical aspects of the direction, the beautiful cinematography and so forth and I did, for all of about 10 minutes, but those guys' central performances were just so good, I was of course sitting there with silent tears pouring down my cheeks at the appropriate moments.
Tom thought that yes, it's a romantic "movie" movie and does all those things like make you cry and all that love "stuff" but most of all it's a film to be angry about. That there should be no reason for that film to exist in terms of the atmosphere surrounding the story existing in the first place. He's obviously right.
God though the character of Ennis really hits me now. He's a great picture of a whole and decent man that's been crumpled and become unrecognisable, with only shards of the original showing, in a confused jumble.
Anyway. Having read "From story to Screenplay" and seen it twice, I think I can now safely say I have it in perspective ; )
Ang Lee was very nice about UK audiences in his speech. i didn't realise "The Ice Storm" didn't really do much business until it had been a massive critical success in the UK. Now that is also a great, great movie. He's a fabulous director of human emotion and he also directs like a painter. Which can't be bad.
We took Nora to the London Acquarium today. It's the second time she's been, but the last time must have been about 6 months ago at least. Nevertheless she had extremely exciting memories of it so when we anounced we were going, she was over the moon. Needless to say she had an ace time (sadly bugger all pictures because both our cameras were ill suited to the conditions. Very dark).
We took a bus because Thameslink was knackered, it being a Sunday. At the bus stop was a guy who I occasionally see around. Nice bloke with a son who is Nora's age. His son is a tad on the quiet side and only speaks the odd word every now and then but is extremely physically active. Much more self confident that Nory is - at the library once he was bumbling around all over the furniture and softish seating blocks, falling off and knowing how to roll to get himself out of trouble... it was great because it encouraged Nora to do the same but I knew that she was in constant danger of falling badly and nastiness occurring.
Anyway. so we're just talking, you know. I was just about to say "we" but in fact it was Nora of course who excitedly said "Going to the acquarium to see sharks". Dad person said "Yeah, I'm going to start taking him to places like that soon", which made me feel immediately a little sorry for the kid but you know... shrug...
Anyway, the big thing was we got on the bus and carried on talking - and Dad person started talking about all the DVD's of the TV programmes that his son had, and reeled off all the programmes on "CBeebies" that his son loved. By programmes, I'm talking... he named more than 10, I would say. He was looking over at Nora whilst reeling these off, looking for that spark of recognition and Nora of course didn't know what "CBeebies" meant (it's the BBC very-young children's TV channel) never mind the programmes. He said "Pingu" and I thought, aha, well at least Nora can show some enthusiasm there so the conversation isn't entirely one sided but she wasn't bowled over by a mention of the lunatic penguin or anything.
Then he said a very strange thing. "I let him watch for about an hour after we've been out". The strange thing wasn't so much the horror (which would be the way I look at it, anyway) of putting a kid only just over 2 in front of the TV for a whole hour (the way he put it, he would do it for longer, but they put the kids shows on rotation, so after an hour, it starts back at the beginning), but that he justified this to himself by pretending that this was a choice the kid made. "I let him". Of course, at this stage in the game, the kid probably does choose, but only because that's what he's been taught.
What do other people do though - are we completely alone in only putting a marginal amount of TV in front of Noodle? I remember a photo of a friend's daughter watching "Finding Nemo" on a laptop when she was probably about Nora's age. Am I actually making her miss out on things? I kind of thought that films wise and that kind of thing I might start with something age appropriate and shortish at about 3, like the Wallace and Gromit shorts or "the Snowman" or something. Am I being too harsh? I'd be interrsted to know views. Except of course my comments may well reject yours. Hmph.
It occurred to me there may be more reasons than simply "because" (from a developmental perspective) as to why this kid barely speaks.
The differences in the way we're bringing Nora up can sometimes slap you around the face with such sharp contrasts. I dislike intensely the stupid background slightly smug emotions that these situations ellicit, but more than anything else, I looked at this lovely little kid and thought my God. There could well be very little difference between him and Nora from an intellectual capacity perspective. In all likelihood there isn't, really. And yet before he's started school, before he's even managed to say a whole sentence, the choices he has in his life ahead are slowly changing and possibly reducing.
And of course there is nothing to be done about it. If you talked about it to the kid's dad, what a wanker you would be! I said during conversation, that we tend to just have DVD's or videos for Nora so that we don't have to be slaves to the TV schedule. I didn't mention that she has 1 DVD and 2 videos, and she watches TV for 5 minutes a day approximately 3 days a week.
The more I've been writing this the uneasy I've become about how ugly, smug and self-satisfied I may be coming across - that isn't the conscious intention, but I'm not going to analyse it any more because then I'll just come across as a wearisome middle class git.
I’ve been ruminating with something recently and I have doubts as to whether I can articulate it sensibly enough. However, I’ve no doubt that people who are paid feminist political economists have probably articulated this theory very well and therefore please do send me any links. I en’t got no time to dig in to the latest Routledge Feminist reader in Ec’s (if such a thing actually exists).
It occurred to me that the phenomena of working women coming late to childbearing is, however unconsciously, a form of “strike” against the prevailing economic and gender specific social conditions that resolve around the world of work.
Put it this way. If one chooses to partake in the modern western world, in terms of having holidays, an income which allows one to rent DVD’s or potentially join a gym, etc (I have very low expectations in this regard because of our limited family income. I guess you could add “flat screen TV’s, the latest MP3 player, etc to that list – and up the holiday ante… er, and getting a nice big house or something), then you need to have 2 incomes. Or one particularly big one. Since most people won’t be in a position where 1 salary pays for modern life, then let’s take it as being 2.
Which brings me to my point. I don’t think that it is merely a case of putting off having children until you are 35 or a similar age. I think that the reservations against having children earlier, on the part of the women involved, is the realistic acceptance that the prevailing socio-economic climate is one where if women have very little opportunity to enter back in to the work place at the level their skills can be best utilised. Workplaces simply do not offer women a flexible environment allowing them to work effectively, as well as look after kids – school hours, sleep hours etc being somewhat different for kids than adults.
The other point being of course that if employers *did* offer proper, comfortable flexible hours schemes then they could also promote them seriously to chaps.
So to reiterate – the reason women do not have children earlier is because those conditions do not exist when one is working up the ladder. They do marginally exist once one has reached a certain point on the ladder ie: I have proved my worth to your organisation, and you’d be idiots to lose me or alternatively, they do marginally exist in working in a part time capacity at the opposite end of the economic spectrum.
So in a sense then, the fact of women putting off having children is in fact a “strike” against the existing socio-economic conditions, rather than simply the decision to put it off because they want to enjoy a career. This is having all sorts of intriguing effect on western nations – primarily of course the increase in immigration from other countries, which I would say a hell of a lot of people have an extremely difficult time with. But most importantly, the lack of children leading to an aging population.
I’m not suggesting any answers or resolutions here. It just struck me as I was discussing this with someone that the “I’m putting it all off for my career” line hides a more subtle and proactive stance against something, rather than simply ‘for’ another.
I've been so busy, I've completely lost track of my bloglines, every single one of my contacts on flickr has updated and I haven't in weeks *and* it transpires according to a good friend that a lazyweb idea I had a while ago was one I should have sold at the time because it's now actually been done.
And it really was one of those "Well duh" ideas too. Apparently I will shortly be getting one of those prized "Beta" invitations that one hears so much about these days.
I was thinking, reading Tech Crunch the other day - there are *so many* wraparound apps being launched right now - do people do them instead of doing CV's? Do people just pull something together so they can go to their job interview and not so much say "Hire me" as "Buy me"?
Yaroo's general "Shit, we'd better purchase this guy's brain before it gets snapped up by the opposition" tendencies would certainly lend itself well to that model.
My God, I'm talking about the industry again. There must be something wrong with me. Ok, I'll tell you what's wrong with me. I'm totally stressed out, and I'm doing 12 hour days and working over the weekends constantly, and have been for about 2 months. I can't fit all the work I have to do in to my schedule, and therefore I can't get through all the handover documents I have to do for my poor bloody 6 month replacement victim. Oh, and this delightfully coincides with me being 8 months pregnant! Just the time when a hell of alot of women would actually be giving up work to rest at home.
Ok. Being sensible and requiring a "non-doocing" scenario to continue means I just deleted a couple of paragraphs. The above pushes it enough. They won't read it anyway.
-No teeth are coming out. Apparently the enamel has been "compromised" and the nerve has been damaged. However, it may spontaneously regenerate. if it *doesn't* then the tooth will go BLACK! but they won't take it out. we have to keep an eye on it whilst the nerve is sorting itself out in case of possible absesses (believe me, I have suffered this horror, if nora gets an absess, my god will we know about it) and if one occurs, she'll be referred to a paediatric dentist.
Right.
Coughing. Our Doc reckons Nora's showing asthma symptoms. In young kids this is characterised by really phlegmy, long and infectious coughs. Hmm. well, Mackay is asthmatic. It's not something that is particularly traumatising to learn. But at least now we have another way to confront this coughing without her having to resort to bloody antibiotics yet again (4 lots this winter, don't forget).
So we'll have to see how it goes. All the fun of the fair.
I'm still up working (thhis is rapidly beginning to annoy me deeply now) but have been accompanied by a completely fabulous evening of selected Jackanory eposides on BBC4.
Glorious.
Judi Dench - I switched on half way through her. She was reading a story I remember reading but stupidly, the listings page doesn't tell me what the story is. It 's the story of a boy and a small Mexican dog which may have been imaginary - and his inheritance of a real, rather boring dog, who nevertheless, he ends the story loving. What the hell was that? George's marvellous medicine (of course) and various other gubbins.
Why don't they put this stuff on DVD? I'd love to sit down with Noodle and watch a Jackanory at night rather than bloody Pingu.
The more I read this book to Nora, the more I'm convinced that it is a highly disturbing portrait of madness. Here's an overview of the story:
-In order to collect nuts on an island inhabited by a venerable and large owl, squirrels in the neighbourhood over a week of picking bring the owl an offering every day.
During that week, every day, Squirrel Nutkin instead of showing respect, dances around like a lunatic in front of the formidable and dangerous owl, sqeaking stupid riddles, and completely ignores the task of harvesting food for the winter in favour of playing ninepins with crab apples and other stupid nonsense.
We never hear any opinions from the other squirrels, but if I were his brother, twinkleberry, for example, I'd have carefully taken Nutkin aside and told him "What da fock do you think you're doin? Do you even unnerstan who Old Brown IS? Are you nuts?"
Instead, they shamefully let the poor deluded bastard carry on sqeaking, building up mental courage all week, getting to the point of jumping on top of the owl and nearly losing his life.
I feel like writing to Whatsisname Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, and saying hey, you should base a story on Squirrel Nutkin. It's a vicious tale of a gang leaving one of its members, so disturbed he needs proper help, to be hung out to dry by the gang boss. Luckily he escapes, but at the cost of being disfigured for life.
...yes, a classic children's story by Beatrix Potter, rewritten as gang fiction!
Nora used the mouse for the first time the other day on the Mac, with no real promting or help. We were playing "Pick a pair" on "Gruffalo.com", and she just naturlaly started to use the mouse herself to switch between virtual cards.
I was proud.
In a slightly different development, Noodle has not only moved on from having no pillow, but she has also ditched the sleeping bag and hass a DUVET! Albeit a half polyester "Amicore" one from Mothercare (but a lovely brushed organic non-dyed cotton cover! C'mon, you've got to give me some credit for that, surely?). She liked the idea of it but she's going through a bit too much with the old teeth atm to appreciate it, plus I'm realising that her "friends" (the menagerie of soft toys she has been given over the course of her short life) are threatening to take over her whole bed, so I think we're going to have to think about a judicious "Some of them live on the sofa" type event (there's a sofa bed in the corner of her bedroom - although it won'tbe there for long since No.2's going in a cot, & Nora's graduating in to a proper honest to goodness bed (bottom bunk) once His Nibs grows out of his Moses Basket).
But all these changes are interesting and at the same time weirdly sad although obviously I'd never let my feelings about how ace she is as a young child get in the way of her development.
Well. the back molars sure are taking their time to come through. Nora meanwhile is suffering from dodgy digestion, and that terrible thing where she will burst in to tears very easily about almost anything at all - not to mention putting up with it stoicly, then every so often simply bursting in to tears and saying that her teeth hurt.
Lovely, lovely girl. She's getting a LOT of hugs at the moment.
Not to mention that oh, what a bloody surprise. The cough she inevitably got with the cold not only survived the prescription cough medicine she had left over from the last time, but has now become worse and woke her up horribly from her afternoon nap today (queue more crying). AAAAARGH. not only is this not bloody fair, but we simply cannot keep loading the girl with bloody antibiotics! It's insane.
We've had a weird winter over here, in which there have been many, many illnesses and sicknesses. One cold snap lasted about 10 days, but the rest of the time it's been slightly warmer than you'd think, and also dry as a bone. Today it rained, mind you, but that's the first time it properly rained since Christmas. Drought and standpipes are predicted for the summer.
So anyway, today we managed to get her out of the house despite the rain by wrapping up super warm and going out in her plastic mac and wellies (mac having been worn now in total *3* times since we bought it last autumn, that's how rainy it hasn't been)... and walking half way to the groovy local cafe where all the waiting staff and the young energetic owner love Nora to bits. She *loved* the walk, and splashed everywhere she could. So she got fresh air, and exercise, but didn't get wet herself, despite a thorough plastic coated dousing. Not too bad for a rainny Sunday.
Oh God, yes - and the other "teeth" thing.
The horrible accident (more horrible for Mackay than for Nora, ultimately) when Nory went bomping down the steps and ... hate saying this, went head first in to the pavement (dear God) seems to have cracked Nora's front tooth. Here's the thing. Mackay thought there was a tinge of brown on it a couple of weeks ago and asked if I'd brushed her teeth.. since then, I really noticed that it looks slightly misshaped at the front then all of a sudden the brownness thing became really obvious. there is clearly something wrong with that tooth at a deep level. My guess is that the enamel cracked when she hit the pavement (all the scraping was centred round 2 fat lips and a graunched chin). Of course McK is beside himself with shame, and even worse, it's the same tooth that he had terrible trouble with when he was young, lost half of, and had to have a crown.
So I just looked up "Milk teeth advice" and it doesn't look good. Nora may lose the tooth.
I'm just going to say that again.
NORA MAY LOSE HER FRONT TOOTH.
I think Mck may need some serious counselling if that happens.
With my iTunes on my work laptop.
In a classic case of non-syncronisation, my iPod (the one permanently attached to the hi-fi at home with all my CD's on) is far too massive in content terms to download to the lappie, and I put all my CD's in to storage (to save from Nora sized messing), so I can't re-rip anything.
I'm sure I can do some kind of extreme-selective synchronising but I'm sure it'll be problematic. Particularly with the whole collection being on the Mac at home.
What I really need is a really good recommendation selection of new music. The only trouble is, my music taste is so confusingly eclectic, no one can give me a good overview. Interweb recommendations engines have *absolutely no idea* what to give me to listen to since I started buying classical a few years ago.
I've heard a few semi decent things on 6 music but I always forget to write them down. If I give you a rundown of the kind of music I have on here for a work environment maybe it'll give someone a clue:
A-Z order missing out the daft rubbish that I haven't bothered removing (plus podcasts):
Beethoven symphonies (thank you Radio 3 downloads)
The Beastie Boys - various albums
Blur - various albums
Brian Eno - various ambient albums
More Beethoven, this time conducted by Carlos Kleiber
De La soul
Dirty Three (and Low, as well. I'm always banging on about The Dirty Three - they're amazing)
Divine Comedy - carious albums
DJ Shadow - various - I'm gone all bored with Shadow somehow. Does anyone know any really shit hot turntablists who've come out of the woodwork recently? My last really big discovery was Kid Koala. I mean jesus, how long ago did he surface!
Flaming Lips - *the* 2004 hipsters album, of course
Glenn Gould the young version playing Bach's Golberg Variations
Go-Betweens - Bright Yellow, Bright Orange. What a fantastic album this is.
Gorillaz - I do like these, but it's just like the Damon Albarn ego roadshow, which bores me. Blur when they were wonderful were a real ensemble piece. well - two great musicians, in him and Coxon.
Graham Coxon, natch
Esquivel - I don't listen to this very much, but it's great to cheer you up, it's so ludicrous
Handsome Boy modelling school - what a great album
The Killers - I maintain that this lot are by far the most talented of the new bunch of bands that have appeared in recent years, from a musical pov. Half the album is cobblers, but the other half is magnificent
Various Quannum people: Lateef, Latyrx, god's gift to poetic rapping, Mr Lyrics Born (I am not worthy), Blackalicious, etc, etc....
Michael Nyman - film greatest hits (more at home, so no need to recommend)
Mitchell brothers - my one and only recent discovery. Very "Streets" but then that's to be expected. I don't know why it is that people somehow seem to be down on Mike Skinner these days. Why? Because kids really like his stuff and he's now "famous"? Who would you prefer kids like, Jessica Simpson? Skinner's the best thing to have come out of British hip hop for years, and if he's spending his time promoting new talent like these guys then I say hooray.
NWA
New Order - Luckily, I managed to rip all my recorded 12"'s before storing the CD
Nick Drake - I think you get the picture as to what I like here... it's pretty diverse (although the two Drake albums I've got here are pretty obvious)
Orbital - duh, of course
Pixies - I find I don't listen to them this much at work, they're too involving
Rimsky-Korsakoff - only Sherezade, for the "Familiarity on the headphones" thing
Scissor sisters
Smiths - Hatful of hollow - again, I find I don't listen to this too much because it's just too involving
Stevie Wonder - various early seventies albums - Innervisions, that sort of thing
Supergrass - In it for the money - I've always really loved this album
Various burble.... er... XTC, Skylarking. One of the most underrated albums of all time
A couple of White Stripes albums but I don't listen to them that much
The only other record I know I really want to get right now is a soundtrack - the one from "Lost in Translation". Has various relatively good indie type tracks plus nwe tracks by Kevin Shields! (He trod on my foot once!). I'd quite like to get the "Brokeback" soundtrack too - Linda Ronstadt and all sorts - but I think that may have more to do with by obvious infatuation with the movie (well, hell, why not).
So there must be other decent new music out there - now you know what I like, can you mail me and give me some suggestions? I promise to follow up with all the good ones. The big thing that's missing from this list is my personal favourite collection from the Johnny Cash "American Recordings" collection, although I fear that if I listened to "The First time ever I saw your face" or "In my life" at work I might just burst in to tears.
So anyway! Suggestions! I heard a song by "Doves" the other day on TV that I thought was quite good. Are they?
Signed,
Totally out of touch Hurley
(Classical recommendations also most welcome)
The atmosphere feels strange and almost unreal at the moment. 6 weeks away from the birth, 3-ish weeks away from leaving the office for 6 months, we're shifting and moving everything at home, and plus in that modern internet shopping way, my birthday has already started.
My brother Stephen has bought me a camera for the Mac, with the idea that us 3 - Owen, Stephen and I get video-skyped up, in order that we can then swiftly get John sorted out then bang - Nora suddenly gets to talk to Uncle Owen and Grandad John every week *and actually see them*. Which will bwe somewhat of an improvement on the current situation with Owen - who she only ever sees in one or two photographs.
My present to myself also came, the book of "Brokeback Mountain, from story to screenplay" - for some weird reason not available in the UK. So I've been waiting daily, hoping that it would come through the post from Amazon US. It came this morning - hooray! so I found myself with small tears appearing, on the luckily empty train to St Albans this morning. Good God, it's just such a beautifully realised story of timeless love and pain.
And of course it's Valentines next week. Whilst trying to to do nauseating hearts type crap, McK and I have in previous years tended to buy each other some daft thing or other. So I'd better get my ass in gear.
Hey, I'd better write an update about Nora at some point today hadn't I given that that's suposed to be my subject. Lots to tell, as usual.
Working at home today (typically "3rd trimester" sleep last night - extreme heartburn, real pain in my right hand side when shifting from 1 side to the other; getting up to go to the loo twice... eesh) so am watching "the hits" channel - the Freeview pop videos blurb, in the background.
The E4 music during the day bit is much better, frankly.
Anyway. just saw Jessica Simpson doing a more Britney than Britney thang in "These boots were made for walking". Supposedly uplifting somehow in that she punches some guy out after coming on to him and him not doing anything in particular (sigh). But it occurred to me watching that and many other female videos that the pressure to, if you can sing well, have not only the body, but the attitude of a porn star appears to be overwhelming these days. If you're a girl, obviously (the only "woman" I can think of singing in the charts is Jennifer Lopez, who does her best to look as young as possible). Blokes meanwhile can look portly if they sing ballads, muscley or conversely, straggley haired and stringy if they sing anything vaguely alternative (ironically of course, alternative chaps now have a tendency to dress with nice haircuts and cheap white-shirt suits).
Anyway. All these girls, simulating sex whilst wearing skinny bikinis and showing off their well oiled muscley legs (all the better to wrap round some lucky guy) - who are they marketing themselves *to*? Because it's mostly young girls who buy pop, am I wrong? Do 13 year old girls need to have a role model of Jessica frickin' Simpson, wearing a bikini, lying with her back arched over the top of a car she is supposedly cleaning? (Willie Nelson, what on EARTH are you doing in that bloody video?).
The saddest thing of course is in this era of X Factor, thouands of young girls who happen to have corking voices will have their hopes dashed upon the rocks of the visual apartheid of the entertainment industry. Fancy a future doing anonymous session singing? You even have to look like a porn star to have a go at backing singing these days.
Dyke teenagers need not reply to the above question.
It's a bit mean this, because what I'd actually like to do is have some sort of debate. Instead because my comments are screwed, it'll all come out slightly on e sided.
A good mate, whose argument stype can be somewhat er... frustrating, has a big bone of contention with me re: "Privacy". His point - privacy is dead. My point - what an absolute load of cobblers.
In the first instance, this story from Wired ("Teens reveal too much online") certainly backs up his points, in terms of - teens simply use online interfaces without having the privacy worries that some of us, as adults a) have ourselves and b) have on their behalves.
But of course what they are actually saying is (as adults doing the worried thing), there have been assaults and problems, particularly associated with the use of Myspace (as part of this investigation. It could just as easily be chat, or Messenger or god knows what else).
The problem I feel personally is that providers of any services like this have a duty of care to limit personal information of specific sorts being shown / touted by kids, either about themselves or about each other. Although Nora's obviously 2 and thus a tad young to be counted in this thing generationally (yet!) what I do see in her, and in older kids too - the kind taking their first steps out in to the interweb world is a simple, trusting innocence based on nothing bad ever having happened. Life is nice and wonderful, everyone I meet is lovely. This is as worrying (but natural) for a parent in the offline world as it should be in the online one.
The fact is that this is a problematic way to live on the internet for kids in innumerable ways. Two points to raise here and one based on what I felt at the time was a subjective case study used in the privacy debate which made no sense: the short of it being - "My teenage friend who is now 17, has been out as gay at school all her life. Things aren't the same any more, privacy is just not an issue".
Well. To bring in another subjective case, I would like to raise that of a teenage boy from a West London family who are strongly religious in the Islamic faith, who made the mistake of telling his parents he was gay. Apparently, he'd told only 1 friend prior to that. His parents have gone completely nuts, and have sent him to a country strongly associated with Islam, where he has relatives for a number of years to get some "therapy". His big friend, luckily, is known to McK, so he is going to relay the message that the kid can go and talk to the British Embassy as soon as he is 16, and be repatriated, without his parents having to know. The kid may not have clocked this as an option. All very horrible, gutwrenching and awful. I've not mentioned any names and kept it vague for obvious reasons.
The point in the story above is that for a certain percentage of the population ie: relatively liberal in attitude, etc, there are aspects of one's early teenage 'acceptance of the self' etc which may now be very different to the 'being beaten up constantly, spat on or sent to Coventry by the entire school population' that would have happened in the past (although, given the amount of school age teenage suicides there are, I sometimes wonder if those days are gone). There is *always* a need for privacy, to protect the interests of kids who do not have the necessary life wisdom to take on that issue themselves. It is a complete nonsense to assume that all kids (indeed, any kids) are in the position where social support and confidence is there in spades, to support them being open about ANY issue that they believe would make them appear "different" to everyone else. And that's above and beyond the privacy re: personal information point.
The thing with the interweb is - curiously, I was having this discussion with a friend just the other day. He was saying that whereas at university, he felt awkward and socially stumbling, when the interweb came along, he suddenly discovered that without the horrors of having to deal with face-to-face communication, 1-1 and 1-many became something easy, and fluid. It's an age old "known" which has probably affected us all to some degree or other.
Consequently, in the making of social and peer-facing applications, developers & owners have to take account of the "open effect" and create the opportunities for there to be safeguards *all over the bloody place*. This has to be looked at more seriously - and there are many easy ways to do this, including an examination of permissions in far more detail. Yahoo 360 goes part of the way there, including the "groupware" permissions of Yahoo groups in its otherwise fairly standard onion layer approach. Some providers have also included parental permissions for younger kids (does my kid really know this person?) but that is also dodgy, given the story above (why does my kid want to know person X? Who are they? - when it could be a secret boyfriend / girlfriend or simply a mentor, for example - aha, it could also be Mr McNasty, the evil teen-impersonator, you say. Well yes, it could be. As I say, it is an extremely thorny issue, but can be attacked in a number of ways across more fronts than simple permissions & parental controls).
There needs to be a balance between privacy and openness, and for my money, the only way this could work is to have a commonly accepted minimum set of requirements / code of practice, otherwise you end up with some apps being lionised as useless, censored crap, and all kids, hip or otherwise (peer pressure's a great thing) going off in to the hinterlands to find un"censored" versions.
That it itself is a) difficult to argue without it becoming a forum for those who would prefer the entire interweb to be policed and b) shrug... it ain't going to happen in my lifetime, realistically, is it.
Tis something we grapple with every day, and it makes the applications we host now really unpopular, because we have limits on usage. I don't have the immediate answers at my fingertips, but I do think if the right people sat round tables and agreed industry standards, then the righht solutions would come a hell of alot easier.
Anyway. Blah blah blah. Privacy ain't dead.
There's an interesting interjection you could make here regarding MSN Spaces and China, but I will do that some other time.