As seen through our front window.
Becky’s particular plant beautifues the garden.
Roses given to Becky by her friend Tori to mark the loss of her mother this summer.
A spider hanging out in our garden — note Gordon in the background.
Terminally ill patients and insane people must be kept alive by any means necessary. They must not be allowed to take their own lives or even to choose the manner of their dying. Ian Huntley must not be allowed to take his own life; he must pay for what he has done. Despite the fact that forcing someone to live who does not want to live (especially to punish them) could be considered the greatest torture of all. We must not interfere with people who choose to engage in absurdly dangerous activities like climbing Everest or setting speed records, though their actions are tantamount to suicide and routinely result in fatalities. In some places, certain criminals must be killed, here they must not be. This is considered a kindness, a reduction in cruelty. Unborn foetuses can be aborted despite the fact that they are clearly alive. But a born baby must not be killed no matter what horrors will shadow its unlived life. In general people get most upset about children dying or being killed; but children have not lived, they have not developed their talents, they have little to offer the world, they are mere potential. Isn’t the death of a full, developed, talented human being in his or her prime more important than the death of a chrysalis? Is this a holdover from sex=sin, therefore adult=sinner? Are we so prissy about innocence? We build weapons to kill indiscriminately. Repeat. We build weapons to kill universally. I love humanity. It’s so… thorny. Did they really split the atom and vanquish a million souls in one moment? Or is it a metaphor for how we feel inside. God is in you and he wants revenge.
Finally my sense of decency done got to me. Not enough to send a disc of my photos from my cousin’s wedding to my aunt, mind, but enough for me to get my photos from mine, my little wifette’s and my folks’ trip to France this summer posted on my website.
Love to you all. Though I don’t know all of you.
Two fast flash comment thoughts.
One, Johnny Cash. He is very popular here in Britain and it annoys me for some reason. Annoyance aside I have to say that I like Johnny Cash. So it’s not that I don’t like his music or anything like that. What it is really is that he died and that damn movie came out and all of a sudden everybody loves Johnny Cash. But the real problem is that you tell people you like country music and they assume Johnny Cash. No, that’s pop music with a country element. Just like you might have Green Day, pop music with a punk element. Of course, these divisions are meaningless and I shouldn’t really care. But something irritates me about the recent surge in popularity of Johnny Cash.
Two, child pornography update. A photograph owned by Elton John (hate him, wouldn’t want to date him) has been seized by the pigs for being possibly, mind you, just possibly, child pornography. Sigh. Here is a representation of the story. The photo as far as I am aware is of two girls belly dancing. One is in her underwear, dancing, the other is lying on the floor looking up at her and laughing. The shock horror of it is that the girl on the floor is lying with her legs apart and wearing no underpants! Now that I have created that image in your mind you can decide whether it is indeed pornographic. Are we so sick? We can’t look at naked children without getting aroused or something? There is nothing sexual about a naked child and there is nothing dirty about human genitals. I can’t believe people are so stupid as to even suggest that such a thing might be pornographic. Oh God! I’m living in a cuckoo clock! The human body is illegal? What is this, 1910? I’m gonna get me a calendar of ladies’ ankles!
I want to name a band The Madeleine McCanns despite it being in poor taste. And if I weren’t so sick of hearing about her and her parents I would do it. Well. If I had a band to name, that is.
Kate McCann to be Named as Suspect
And the wheel turns. Finally the blind eye of justice rolls towards the couple themselves. So calm in the limelight of their horrifying experience. Behaviour so uncanny that no one, especially not good sensible people like the Portuguese, can trust them. People who would wail and beat their breasts if their own child went missing. Can’t trust the steely eyes of the couple who show no raw nerve at what could be the loss, forever, of their eldest daughter. Only bizzarre determination and an indefinite anger. The look of some vast thing hidden in the face of the father. He looks like a man with a terrible secret, anyone can see that, it’s only a matter of time before it comes to light. The uncertain look in the eyes of the child in those pictures they show. Something was wrong. Pictures we are meant to understand as cute somehow disturb us. She was not the light they make her out to be. There is a sadness or distress in her strange and tiny features.
I hope it is all untrue. I hope they find her in a McDonald’s in Ramstein, abducted by a total stranger. But intuition speaks loud as gnats in summer ears. Something is wrong there.
Added Note: It reminds me of Cordelia’s refusal to play the game of who loves father most. Or Hamlet’s madness and mistrust after his father’s death. His extremity of grief by Ophelia’s grave. Lady MacBeth’s excessive protests. The Bard understood the power of shows of emotion; showing too much or too little causing doubt and mistrust in others; how we esteem emotional display and read by it a tale of guilt or suspicion or madness in the mind. How judgmental we all are, and how much meaning we take from people’s public demeanor. We want just enough, not too much, not too little.
I took a picture of Becky the other day and when we loaded it on the computer it was so strange:
