Hovering, breathless,
on the edge of desolation.
The egg cracks open. Â
The shell is broken. Â
It is but a token.
Of your esteem. Â
I dream in monochrome. Â
Somebody tell me
what I am supposed to do. Â
What does your psychiatrist
really think of you?
I cry out, I kneel
on a beach of grey pebbles
and bleached bones.
Pleading with God
Won’t you take me
Won’t you take me home?
Some random person: ‘Why aren’t you in sheltered accommodation?’
Moi:’Did you spend the ‘eighties hiding under a rock, or on an extended holiday on some distant, undiscovered planet?
They were just foot soldiers.
The dragnet effect. Collective guilt.
Are cherry picking and over extrapolation now acceptable in medical research (particularly psychiatry)?
There is only one thing worse that being devoid of admirers and that is being replete with admirers who are seriously dim.
Remember this:
‘The plural of anecdote is not data.’
Ben Goldacre.
‘The most dangerous words in medicine are ‘In my experience…”
Unknown.
‘If in doubt blame the nurses’
Doctor Incompetence.
What diagnosis would I give: ‘delusions of omniscience by proxy.’
And finally:
‘Nullius in verba’.
Heavily medicated, on the edge of sleep. I have no particular desire to wake up. A passing thought: ‘IE’ used to be the sound that witches made when they were being burnt at the stake. Â Now it is an Internet Browser. Â How far we have come.
RIP Steve Jobs. Nothing much else to say. Well, there is but now is not the time.
Au Revoir, mes amis.
I make a conscious effort not to surrender to the potential for misty eyed nostalgia that exists for good or ill within us all. Mine is just beneath the surface, always ready to bubble over. This is why I must be firm with it, ruthlessly suppressing any trace of it.
Today though I decided to succumb to it. I read an article about the ‘actress’ Joan Collins who feels that the ‘youth’ are lacking the moraL fibre of their parents:
And this comes from an actress who has had numerous extra-marital affairs and starred in films entitled ‘The Stud’ and ‘The Bitch’. Does anyone mind if I look elsewhere for moral guidance?
The article made me think of my school friend Cally (diminutive of Caroline.) In spite of her angelic blond haired, blue eyed appearance she appeared to be precocious in all the wrong ways. She told us in forensic detail about her sexual exploits with the boys on her estate. The other member of out trio: Rachel and I listened to her, wide-eyed, both fascinated and disgusted. We were, after all, good Catholic girls.
Years later I met Cally again. To my surprise she was studying languages at Bradford University. I reminded her of the sordid tales she used to tell us. She replied ‘You didn’t believe all that stuff, did you? I made it all up. With a little help from Jackie Collins.’
A commenter on a social networking site which shall remain nameless said that ‘the kids’ (Note the inverted commas) were rioting because they were ‘crying out for food’. I must say that I had no idea that plasma TVs were edible. Does anyone have a recipe for this delicacy? Wide screen TV casserole sounds simply delightful.
The parents of these rioters should be made to read A Clockwork Orange because, as the parents of Alex discovered, these people turn on those closest to them before they start on everyone else.
The owner of a small high street store, bewildered and distressed at what these people had done to her and her small business, said ‘They were like feral rats’.
I call that an insult to feral rats.
On international schadenfreude:
On rioting:
In case anyone was wondering.
Salon.com has an alternative take on the matter:
The untermenschen are always being told to emulate their betters. I guess that’s exactly what they were doing.
So Sick of Drowning 