Ah, blessed irony

OK, in a vain effort to steer away from stuff about Nazis, hatred, and discrimination, I’ve just spoken to the letting agents for the house I saw last Saturday, and filled in the forms for.

I was trying for an update, to let me know where things stand and if there were any problems. However, the letting agents themselves were broken into last night, so the office is chaos today. They should be able to give me an update by the end of the day though – the files are still there, just the computers got nicked.

Comments

I must admit, following Peter’s comment here about my comment regarding Eugenics, I find myself quite stumped really. Maybe I made out I was some form of a fan of programmes involving creating a master race – which I’m emphatically not. If such a programme existed, I’d never have been let through the net, nor would most of the people I know and care most about in the world.

However, when temperatures rise and IQs fall, I do despair of people in general, and that leaves me wondering about what else could be done. As an intellectual exercise, things like Eugenics are fascinating – how would it be administrated and administered, what would the criteria be, who would get to chose, that kind of thing. It’s an abhorrent exercise – I’m firmly retro and not even convinced about the necessity of choosing the sex of one’s child, let alone whether it should fulfil some kind of specification for Aryan perfection.

I’m actually quite hurt in some ways that Peter would think I’d consider Nazi-esque pogroms, let alone be an enthusiast of them – but at the end of the day, there’s very little I can do to change his perspective, nor that of anyone else. As for no longer wanting to read a site because of one post – I find that equally hard to understand. Over the last year I’ve seen many viewpoints I dislike, or even disagree with intensely – but that doesn’t stop me reading the site. In the example used here, if I were reading a site that constantly put out hatred of others, bigotry, racism and generally Nazi-esque viewpoints then yes, I’d stop reading it. If it were a one-off mention – and even then not one that was particularly enthusiastic about the subject, just using it as an illustration – then I think benefit of the doubt could be applied.

At the end of the day, I suppose I keep coming back to an ethos my father drilled into both myself and my brother : “I may not like what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.“

Pewari Says…

Via Pat BlogsLife, she mentions Pewari’s post saying that people can easily list ten things they dislike, but take much longer to list ten things they’re happy about – which seems like a challenge to me. So…

10 things I’m happy about
1. d4d™ – I know it’s sad and self-referential, but yeah, d4d makes me happy – I’m proud of it, and the fact it’s been running for a year now.
2. The fact I’ll be moving soon – that makes me happy (and stressed, but that’s another story)
3. The way life‘s slowly shaping up – work, money, life in general
4. The friends I’ve got who’ve come through in times of need, and who have offered help when it wasn’t expected
5. The way the future looks (no, not Orange) and the potential events of the next couple of years
6. Good food – and good drink – but the occasions when I go out with friends in general
7. going to concerts – particularly seeing favourite bands, but most gigs make me happy
8. Producing decent websites that clients like – again, sad but true
9. Feeling my age-old depression lifting, feeling optimistic about the future – just having that newer viewpoint makes me happy
10. Possibly linked to the previous item, but also feeling the desire to write more again – that’s a very good feeling, like welcoming back an old friend

Jane Says…

While Gert apparently has the theme tune from Knots Landing going through her head today, I’ve instead been blessed with a variety of sound-bites from Jane’s Addiction. It doesn’t cause me a problem – I’ve always liked them anyway – but going through the town centre with the lyric “Some people should die – and that’s just unconscious knowledge!” rattling around inside the brain is possibly not the best idea.

Ah well.

Nicked with his boots on

Further to my earlier comments about naked hikers, it turns out that the police have arrested the man trying to hike naked from Lands End to John O’Groats and returned him to Cornwall where he started off. However, as no-one had actually complained about him (and quite right too – let the daft sod get on with it, so far as I’m concerned) they’re going to let him off with a warning, rather than being charged with anything.

I suppose that all comments about “being picked up by the fuzz” would be completely inappropriate. *Grin*

An actor after all the clowns

I suppose it’s true that Californian’s never learn. I know we’ll have to wait ’til the elections to know for sure, but the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is standing for the position of Governor in California would surely be enough to scare most people comatose.

However, looking at some of the other people who may be candidates, Arnie actually seems like a sensible choice. There’s Gary Coleman (the height-challenged one from Diff’rent Strokes, also an ex-convict), Larry Flynt (Publisher of the Hustler porn magazines, among other things), Leo Gallagher (a comedian so funny I’ve never heard of him) and a porn star called Mary Carey. Hardly the most reassuring bunch of proto-politicians.

And you just know that if/when the Schwarzenegger campaign fails this time, his official statement will be “I’ll be back”.

Colour coding

In a fit of heat-induced boredom, I went over to do a test on “what colour are you“? I think the result may be quite revelatory…