We listened to Kasabian before getting into the car and driving over to where the in-laws live.

And for some reason, I'd rather stay with the memory of Kasabian than re-enter their house...albeit in my memory.



First thought: This is their choice.
Second Thought: I left there feeling psychically numb.

At one point, listening to father-in-law I actually saw red. His monologue was almost too much for me to endure. But there is nothing to be done (or is that exactly what I'm supposed to believe?) so I held my tongue.

My In-Laws hold contradictory points of view; they believe (basically) that family should help out, father-in-law gives us the rosy image of old dad or mom sat by the fire at the heart of the family no trouble to anyone and surrounded by the day to day goings on. I almost said 'So where exactly in our house do you see that happening? Our house has three floors no fire (rosy-tinted-glo old person would have to sit by the open door of the gas cooker) there is no downstairs toilet, no possibility of sleeping in the kitchen, I have no intention of installing stair-lifts. Both sons are bigger than me now and their sisters turn up at random times and have to sleep in the living room....in short, this fantasy of an ideal past isn't leading anywhere useful!' They also believe in autonomy and that they should be able to do exactly as they wish; after being in hospital a disabled person gets six months of care at no cost to themselves; after that time, it costs up to eight pounds and hour to employ a carer.

Apparently care should be free?

I saw red because father in law was animated at the audacity of some relatives who suggested that a cruise may be a nice idea; they said that they had been on cruise and that disabled people are treated very well.

Father-in-law called this 'poking their nose in where it's not wanted'

"If they only knew how difficult every day is" he said, I asked mother-in-law,
"Would you like to go on a cruise and see the sun?"

But it is unthinkable for her to answer with him there unless the answer is no. I think that she would love to go, but is so used to her husbands stupid fearful ways and unable for totally dumb reasons, to get mad.

So she just moans about him behind his back, and feels that this makes her life more tolerable!

My impression is of looking at chickens -that thing chickens do if you push their heads down and make them look at a line in the sand; they freeze and stand hypnotised...

A quote from Iris:

To make anyone about to have a visit from OFSTED, smile.

Remember, the man who started OFSTED (Woodhead) was a teacher and end of the day his students frequently locked him in the toilet and other staff at the school would have to release him to enable him to go home.

Oddly enough a local home-ed group is about to get the OFSTED treatment; I don't see how this could possibly help anyone other than budding anthropologists.

Oh?

Living in our little radio 4 and World-Wide-Web bubble I kind of miss the waves of emotional turmoil that surface in the outer world; to be frank with you, I don't miss it that much!

Well anyway, seems that the anti-vaccination people feel inclined to see the swine flu vaccination as part of a government conspiracy -to kill something like 98% of world population to prevent global warming- hmmm.

The story behind the photo is here [LINK] I quote:

The rest of the leaflet contains the usual conspiracy theorist blending of statistics and pseudoscience, and frankly it's all a little out of date, as it states that the deadly second virus was set to be released "at the end of this summer", so either the great anti-viral genocide involves a delayed reaction, or the fears of the conspiracy theorists have proven unfounded. I'll let you decide which one it is. The CD enclosed with the leaflet even contains a longer, eight-page, version, which proceeds to involve Hurricane Katrina, Middle East wars, the banking system, the Black Death and just about anything else you can think of in the conspiracy. The Illuminati aren't explicitly mentioned, but presumably they are the global rulers responsible for it all...

The trouble is, the anti-vaccine lobby once had a point; the vaccination against small pox in Britain was compulsory and sometimes lethal.

The law was changed, vaccines improved and yet the fear lingers on.

For some people vaccines posses a kind of aura, they become taboo, but no one who is possessed by this irrational memory is ever going to be helped by others explaining to them why their fears are groundless; the fear is groundless because it is 'picked up' and not arrived at by logic so logic will not help here; unfortunately I've no idea what will.

More Faust.

Rainy day Sunshine girl!

Ah...I think I need to add more drums, they are just not heavy enough. Here is a picture of me, in the very act of mixing this (with white wine) trying my best to give the camera my evil genious face.

Loops and wine.
Very good.
I recommend.

Yeah, the drums are not heavy enough more bass. more bass, more bass say I

The parents-in-law problem is depressing.

When my dad took to drink in a big way I went to see the doctor and asked him if there was anything that could be done? I mean if someone is 'a danger to themselves' then they are taken away, given mind-numb-drug and released to be a zombie until something changes...or not.

"No" said the doctor, "He has to make his own mind up to stop drinking". Well dur, I thought, aren't you missing the point? Drinking is his best answer to something -life I guess- so obviously his thinking is pretty messed up! When you have a grown man sitting inside the car, on the drive, parallel to the living room window swigging brandy because he has a sense of privacy -that no one can speak to him even though he is totally visible to us- in the car, obviously he has gone just a little mad.

I mean what is the ethical answer here? Should we have been nice to him about his love of drink, and not tipped the damned stuff down the drain? Should we have been welcoming, smiled as he emptied his third bottle of the day, laughed with him as he aimed for the door, missed and walked into the wall?

The alternative; to not be nice, to stop smiling and to make it pretty clear that we hated what was happening didn't work. The only difference would have been that he'd have felt supported (as he killed himself millilitre by millilitre)

To have been able to be nice about it, I'd have had to have had a lobotomy!

I found watching his self-destruction horrific; I told him so, but I spared him the medical details; in fact I didn't let myself think about the details.

I now think that it would have been better if I hadn't kept quiet. After all, he really believed that death would be just a kind of coma, a painless slide into oblivion. He didn't foresee the brain damage (terrifying hallucinations) and the drowning to death in his own blood.

So parents-in-law, my problem is that their 'life style choice' makes me incandescent with rage. Father-in-law, at the time of mother-in-laws phone call was sat on the settee watching rugby. As with sister-in-law (when she came out of the mental home after being sectioned) and offers of help, he says 'Na, we are fine' so when they were offered two zimmer frames (one for the bottom of the stairs and one for the top (stair lift in between) he said, na, don't need it.

So now, each time she needs to go upstairs, she needs him to take the one and only frame upstairs first; so there goes that tiny bit of autonomy gained by the stair-lift.

Sitting on the settee and pretending that she is in control of what they eat, what gets cleaned and what colour the new curtains should be is it, the sum total of her life; whilst he decides what is on the TV.

Honestly I see red when I think of it.

But it's what she wants; just like my dad who just wanted to stop feeling the pain of his life and to be happy -nothing wrong in that, just his method was stupid! if it is just what she wants then why does it matter that the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay had more of a life than she has? Why does it matter that if he has a fall, or gets ill, she is literally incapable of getting up or down the stairs, or getting food (the food is out of her reach and the packets are impossible to open, she can't even buy any!)?

Should we just smile and say, 'Oh you are doing so well' when most of this incapacity is self-inflicted (the physical problems could have been solved incrementally by simple solutions, such as having a downstairs toilet built, learning how to get food delivered, setting up direct debits to pay bills).

What I'm asking is, how is this situation different from that of my dad?

I'm also looking at why I can't be positive about the future (!) and what I think about either saying nothing or saying everything.

Whilst she was in hospital, mother-in-law said to Gavin, 'perhaps Jo could cut my hair?' my first thought was, 'of course' my second thought was 'this will be the thin end of the wedge' there would be the 'oh and while you are here, could you just...' and my answer is 'absolutely no way can I'!

I am not a caring person at all, I will help anyone who is in need, but people who require help to maintain their fucked-up lifestyle are difficult to respect. I'm happy to write a list of solutions to their problems, I'm happy to explain them. I am not happy to help maintain the insanity of their way of life.

So that's that!

My mom was the same, when expected to help take care of my great aunt Mabel, my mom lost no time at all in getting her into a home. My mom didn't exactly enjoy her aunt's company, had never got on well with her, and my mom had her own life to get on with.

My mom felt guilty, especially as Mabel died soon after, but that's just the way it is. Choices have to be made, and giving someone what they want -being nice to them as they drink themselves to death, or moan on about how hard life is when they will do nothing at all to help themselves- is too much.

So, we are in limbo right now, regards the in-laws. Mother-in-law thinks that she will get better (both ankles joints nailed into a fixed position, both knees replaced) it makes me feel cruel and unkind not to play along with the dreams, but this situation reminds me all too much of my dad. I mean if he could delude himself to such a degree, then this mental-space (a state of mind where reality has gone bye-bye) is classed as a kind of normal because no one has a name for it (as the doctor said 'it is his choice').

People in this place (where reality has gone bye-bye) don't want to hear anything that will fracture the fatal illusion that all is well; it is as if they are hypnotised or is it blinded by the oncoming light?

Eee.

Saturday mornings seem to be dedicated to finding as much space as possible on my hard-drive; I'm sure I was doing this last week, I was definitely doing it yesterday.

Eee PC_Shrinker rummages through your files (put it on D disk!!) and tweaks out plenty of Windows stuff that can be consigned to the bin. Download it from here.

Windows will not let me throw away stuff such as Outlook express, but these things are only minimally installed (unless you actually chose full install) and can be 'switched off

START-> SET PROGRAM ACCESS AND DEFAULTS-> ADD/REMOVE WINDOWS COMPONANTS.

System restore eats space, so every so often switch it off and then on again:

START-> ALL PROGRAMES-> ACCESORIES-> SYSTEM TOOLS ->SYSTEM RESTORE ->SYSTEM RESTORE SETTINGS. Switching it off gets rid of its 'saves', but System Restore is a bit of an odd fish anyway...not always the best way to solve a problem.

Finally, finally I should throw out Windows XP and run EeeUbuntu [LINK]

To restore an Eee to factory default:

• 1.Press F9 while the system is booting up


• 2.Select "Restore Factory Settings" from the menu.


• 3.Type in "yes" to proceed.

At this point one needs to have either a disc-drive connected and an EeeUbuntu disc, or to have saved Ubuntu onto to D disk; on the other hand, there is a big chance that D get's wiped during the f9 cataclysm. As I'm only thinking about it, I don't actually know what would happen if I did it.

Anyway, paradoxically this PDF about how to get Windows XP on to your Eee (in my defence, I didn't actually want XP, just Overclockers was selling this one cheap!) it contains usrful notes on how to optimise Windows - go here.

More...mantic drum beats please!

Moloch, a god to whom a nation sacrificed its children is the title of a film by Aleksandr Sokurov; and it was a delight (chilling, and heavy though it was). The camera work and the use of music were influenced by Tarkovsky but more than that, I enjoyed the way it made me change my mind about Eva Baun.

At the age of 33 and after 40 hours of marriage to Hitler, Eva bit down on a cyanide capsule; Hitler had been introduced to her as 'Herr Wolffe', a fitting introduction. I'd always seen her as 'Little Red Riding Hood' not someone who 'ran with the wolves'. There was no kind woodsman with an axe to save her, but Eva could never have seen the danger..surely...

I dismissed her as an ignorant air-head (for that is how she is often portrayed) because it is easy to fall into those kinds of easy short-cuts about someone.

Sorkorov is kinder than me.

His film reminds me that Hitler was just a man, the danger came because other's wished to believe that he was more.



As it is Armistice day and I'm knee deep in Jack's GCSE history, I can't help but be pulled to remember all the other stories; the ones that didn't make it into 'History'....

Albert Speer wrote:

"Eva Braun was allowed to be present during visits from old party associates. She was banished as soon as other dignitaries of the Reich, such as cabinet ministers, appeared at the table ... Hitler obviously regarded her as socially acceptable only within strict limits. Sometimes I kept her company in her exile, a room next to Hitler's bedroom. She was so intimidated that she did not dare leave the house for a walk. Out of sympathy for her predicament I soon began to feel a liking for this unhappy woman, who was so deeply attached to Hitler."

Speer later said, "Eva Braun will prove a great disappointment to historians."

She was the very first blond bimbo; bleached hair, make-up, a total disregard for the 'lifestyle choices' of the man she loved, she wasn't even a 'survivor'. Yet dismissing her as just a silly woman taken in by fantasy, elevates the rest of the whole sorry, sordid mess of treaties and battles, into real history.

Yet it is clear to me that history is a Juggernaut carried forward on fantasy, often crushing anyone or anything that remains aloof from the dreams. As I return in my mind to that railway carriage at 5 am on the 11th November 1918 (the signing of the Armistice) and think about the rational desire for fair negotiations becoming lost in animosity and pig-headed stubbornness, my reaction is as ever to wish to stay out of it all, to bury my head and hope that I wake up in a less blood-thirsty world.

The sorrow of the Eva Braun story for me is that she probably felt the horror of her situation but was, as all of us really are, at the mercy of her dreaming...I'm just fortunate that my dreams have never led me anywhere as cold and desperate as the Kehlsteinhaus.

Endymion, 'as cold as the moon':

At 11:30 last night we set off to get Call Of Duty...I find it easy to reassign meaning to time, to imagine that this 11:30 is actually AM, but the lack of cars, more than a lack of sun is the weirdest thing.

The night was cold, shreds of mist blurred the trees and scattered the sodium light. The absence of cars highlighted the other sounds, such as the hum and rumble of the electronic advertising board -always lit, always rotating, offering shampoo and other ephemera- carbon off-set by three times seven new energy saving light bulbs (with added mercury).

Cars, the select few that drive at speed and burn rubber were around, sounds of crashes and metallic thumps came from loading bays where stores were being re-stored.

The atmosphere was unsettling.

ASDA had the cheaper offer, but ASDA is horrible...no point in explaining why, just try it! Security guards and less light are the obvious markers for the dys-ease.

The queue was long; overhearing snippets I worked out that we were at about position 200 away from the pay-point. I wasn't sure that there would be enough copies of the disc, so I left my family and went to find Games-Station. More security guards, low light and the added goodness of black Mesa style corridors.

I declined the lift and took the stairs down; at Games station the queue was up to 17 people!

I returned to the ASDA queue annoyed at the inertia of my family -in other words I was in a Doom3 player state of mind- anyway...we went to Game Station, and Jack is playing now, even as I type.

The better thing about last night was Neu and Can and Faust!

I'd never thought about German music before, here is Neu (pronounced Noy).


Faust:


And finally COD:
This film is pretty much what playing COD is like!

Though I hear those Quake3 bots have grown up a bit since their Arena days.

Infinity Ward chose the date of release (today to be: 11/10/09)a kind of sick brother of a date to the 11th hour of the 11 day. I'm always impressed by COD (easy to criticise the game -bots in particular- but the glitches don't ruin gameplay.)The music carries the game for me, but the breadth of the maps in this COD are pretty amazing...

Anyway...