July 25, 2003 (idea)

On the way to work I had cause to contemplate gravestones. In a way they are the ultimate expression of our desire to transform ourselves into machines, because gravestones are machines, they are machines of remembrance. They do not last forever, but they last longer than we do. Eventually the names are erased by the wind and rain but the stone remains, and thus I conclude that eternity comes at the expense of anonymity. The pyramids fascinate people still, but nobody really knows - truly knows - the people who built them, or for whom they were built. There are historical records of the names of pharaohs, and of some of their deeds, but the human beings behind the scattered facts and the jewellery are gone forever. A man is more than the things he owns and accumulates throughout his life; or rather, a man who could be summarised purely by his material wealth is not a man, he is a manifest, three score years and ten reduced to a sheet of papyrus with some goods and quantities written on it.

Children are machines;
they are containers for our genes,
they mark the spot
where we stopped

There are none so blind as those that cannot see, they say, and there are none so blind as the blind because they cannot see, because they are blind, because they sinned in the womb - perhaps they shat, or masturbated, inside their mother - and God is punishing them. You know Stevie Wonder? People are naturally sympathetic towards him because he's blind. It's a +2 modifier on his sympathy scale. But if he had spent his life simply closing his eyes, people would not at all be sympathetic towards him. Therefore it's not his lack of sight that we sympathise with, it's the fact that he can't control this - we are sympathising with his lack of control, his inability to control his own body. This is why we tend to see babies through rose-tinted lenses (and not just because of the potential for ultra-violet damage), it is because they cannot control themselves. Our bodies are the only things we really control in this world, and even then we do not truly control them, in the long run, because they degrade and die no matter how hard we will this not to be so.

It seems to me that we do not sympathise at all with Peter Falk, TV's Colombo, even though he is half-blind (he only has one eye), or Evelyn Glennie, the percussionist, who is deaf (perhaps from playing the drums too loud, I know not), or Mark McManus, TV's Taggart, who is actually dead (he went too far). We sympathise with Wonder because he was once young and blind and talented, but everybody was once young, even Peter Falk, he was once young, and talented, and so was I, and nobody sympathised with me, although admittedly I was not physically abnormal. Indeed I still have my tonsils and appendix and foreskin so I am more normal than most people, although I have had teeth removed and I regularly shave off my facial hair. The hair on my head is going of its own accord but that's natural, like yoghurt.

Stevie Wonder became famous when he was a child, but non-baby-children have no control over anything, yet we are not sympathetic to most children, indeed as far as the press is concerned children are amoral devils who should be beaten and tortured. We hate children, they can get away with crimes and adults are not allowed to hit them back. I do not have control over the area just below my eyes any more, each side twitches uncontrollably, but people do not send me letters of support and Motown have not offered me a record contract, which sickens me. I can control my ears, however, to a surprising degree. But this skill is of no use in the modern world.

I've never really thought long and hard about 'Legally Blonde', because I've never had cause to, because I've not seen the film and do not intend to, like 'The Truth about Cats and Dogs' and 'How to Make an American Quilt' and '10 Things I hate About You', it's one of those films I will never, ever see, ever, across the entire span of my life. Even if I was on an aeroplane, travelling to New Zealand to be with my loved one, and I was sitting in the middle isle next to somebody I did not like, and there was no window and I had run out of books, I would not watch it. I would think about the course of my life and how it brought me to this place, and what I could have done differently to be somewhere else, but I would not watch 'Legally Blonde', even if it was a version of the film in which Reese Witherspoon's clothes fall off because I do not think of her in a sexual sense. Obviously some people do, because she is with child, although it is possible as I have said to have a relationship with a lady and to have children without the sexual monster spoiling everything.

The thrust of my confusion is that I am now unable to ignore the film because there are posters for the sequel, 'Legally Blonde 2: Blonde on Blonde', all over the place. Did you know that 'Romy and Michele's High School Reunion' was called 'Romy and Michele: More Power to the Blonde' in German? Look it up on Everything2, I did a writeup on the film. Lisa Kudrow is another lady I do not think of in a sexual sense, but that does not mean we could not lead a worthwhile and happy married life. We could talk about things and, when a child is required, I could steel myself for the deed, or artificial means could be employed, but what matters is that we love each other and that we are little lights shining in a pitch-black tank of water. One light on its own can be swamped by the darkness but two lights reinforce each other, indestructible, like Ernest Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich.

And therefore it seems I was spoiled at an early age by love; a pure love that was more than the kind of love fully-grown adults have. Adult love stems from money and security, and if two people can just get on with each other it doesn't matter if there's no real passion, no actual love, they still get married and live lives together. Mild affection and tolerance are the lot of grown-up lovers, but young love is the only love that could fuel a mutual suicide pact, or cause each party to wish that the other could be cojoined like a siamese dream, or just a hot animal machine. Love is blood, it is not magic, it is fear. Sometimes I want to crow like a horse. Christ, I'm burning up. Do suicide bombers love something, that causes them to join the nothing?

But 'Legally Blond', right. The title is obviously a pun, but on what? I initially assumed it was a pun on 'Legally Blind', and gave it no more thought (perhaps the main character is blind to the things about her, or something), but that's complete nonsense. You can't be 'legally blind', you are 'medically blind', although I suppose if you want to claim benefits you'd need to prove that you were blind. So my next thought is that it must be a pun on 'Legally Bound', which must be a marriage thing, although I am unclear on this because I am not married - just like Edward Heath, Prime Minister of the UK from 1970-1974, and indeed I believe that he and I are very similar people, we have many talents, although he is not famed for his sleep-inspired rambling but then again I am not famed at all, so it all balances out in the end...

And in the end the pies you make are equal to the pies you take, that's my motto, or one of them anyway, along with 'go all the way or none of the way' and 'rape the reaper' and 'do not stop'. A British science lady in the Antarctic has been killed by a seal, but you don't see the newspapers saying that we should send a UN force to attack the seals and keep the peace. We have nothing in common with them and they are the enemy we seek, the unthinking, unfeeling aliens against which we could sharpen and hone our swords. Oddly this news - the science woman dying, not the UN anti-seal attack force - is on the front page of today's Sun which must be a smokescreen for something else. The woman looked very nice and I could imagine being her friend or husband, moresoeven than anybody mentioned above. There would be less pressure to perform the sexual act because she is a scientist, a woman of books and the intellect, and she would understand my philosophy on this matter.

Just from looking at her face I could tell that she did not deserve such an end, although on the positive side she's famous for a day and it's fitting for a marine biologist to end this way, to die in the Antarctic, in the water, killed by a seal. It's almost ironic, really. It would be like Stephen King, the author, being pinned underneath a falling typewriter and then dying slowly of starvation or blood loss, or Ron Jeremy, the porn star, accidentally choking to death on a dildo, or drowning in a vat of cow semen such as found in some farms. Or if David Cronenberg was to die of cancer suddenly and fall into a vat of cockroaches.

Damn way to go, though. There was a rumour that Rudolph Valentino met a similar end (i.e. the dildo). (looks at workmates) No, it was Ramon Novarro, who is forgotten now except for that one fact, heck of a thing to be remembered for. His mother was probably none too pleased. Valentino sent him the dildo, though. It was made of lead, which is probably unhealthy, but would have the advantage that, if it was 20mm or 30mm in diameter, you could fire it from an anti-aircraft gun. Although it would not be a 'spitzer' bullet (i.e. pointed-nose) it would nonetheless be instantly fatal against any living creature, and would worry any vehicle up to a main battle tank, especially at close range. The people so killed would a-dildo-die. I reckon, right, that Ann Summers should cash in on the 'Lord of the Rings' craze and release a Tom Bombadildo. It would have voice samples of folk music that could be activated by pressing certain buttons. People would come to the sound of the sackbut.

My dad brought home some cannon shells from RAF Chilmark when he was made redundant - mostly old ones for the Lightning, which was discontinued, and latterly the Tornado and Jaguar - and you couldn't use them as dildos, at least not for insertion purposes (you'd stab your womb or injure your intestines, depending on which orifice you used, and in any case they would be very cold, which might be why so many dildos are made out of wood, because wood is warm). Worst of all, if the house was struck by lightning whilst you were doing this, and you were wearing a wedding or engagement ring, you'd probably blow yourself up. Which would also be an interesting way to die.

Perhaps the lady insulted the seal. Never insult a seal in its native environment, the ocean, because they are masters of that domain. Instead, insult seals in the classroom or the shop, or inside a train; they have no power there, they are weak. Seals would make excellent couches, if we could train them for that; they could move people around the house and theoretically take people to work, if they could drive cars. I'm amazed we haven't tried this already.

There are also lots of other posters around London, some of which I comment upon here:
1. Kew Gardens
This poster is yellow and has a drawing of a badger, but it looks like a demented, evil badger; I don't know what target market the poster is aimed at.

2. 'To Kill a King', British film, probably rubbish - it has Tim Roth, for Christ's sake, say no more
Firstly interesting for an image of the lovely Olivia Williams, and also for the quote 'Rupert Everett is exquisite' from one of the reviewers. Both he and Dougray Scott look right for their parts (King Charles the Headless and some guy called Fairfax), but Tim Roth does not look how I imagine Oliver Cromwell to look. He's too thin, not socialist enough.

3. Sleeptalk ('a new Asian collective')
This appears to be some kind of dating service but it doesn't state this openly on the advert. The picture consists of some men and women, who seem to be tinted greeny-yellow. The women are generally attractive but the men are freaks; the main guy looks like a hamster, there's one who looks like a spastic - it's a cruel thing to say, but you would think *exactly the same thing* if you saw the poster and let's be honest here, 'spastic' is only a word, and a concept, and a prejudice, it's not like menacing and harassing passers-by or burning an entire family to death - and another who I can't remember but was not attractive. They needed to pick some better models, unless - and here Ron Jeremy rears his head again in my writing today - the intended effect is to make male spectators walk tall.

4. Zee TV
Also a subcontinental thing, this has a terrible slogan which doesn't work, to whit:
ENTERTAINMENT WHICH IS
OUT OF THIS...
(Apollo picture of earth from space])

It's supposed to make us think '... which is out of this world', but I mentally parse it as '... which is out of this Earth' or 'globe', or I just don't parse it at all. It looks, in fact, like the slogan is '... which is out of this...' and the Earth is a separate element. This was a bad choice. Is it more socially acceptable to put your fingers in your ears than it is to do so with your nose?

5. Poster for something, naked woman, sign over her breasts saying "If this was Italy this poster would not be censored"
Which got me thinking about nipples; there have been plenty of posters and magazine covers which have displayed every element of lady's breasts, yet as long as the nipple is covered up the breasts are not obscene. And nipples on their own are not obscene either, at least not in a sexual sense (in fact they are extremely unattractive). Yet combine the two and you have something that men will pay good money to look at and/or touch and squeeze and lick and come between, and also something which would not be able to put on a poster on the London Underground.

Triggertrouser. Mon dat.