50% of us are below average

Reliable Sauce

According to theoretical physicists, in approximately 3-4 billion years the sun will swell to engulf planet earth, and to make matters worse the Andromeda galaxy will collide with our own.

According to Raymond Blanc, the best watercress is to be found in Oxfordshire.

According to a wealthy couple I know, it's best to avoid the world and just enjoy yourselves in a cosy bubble of indulgence.

According to many Christian fundamentalists, the earth is between 6-10,000 years old.

According to the Daily Mail, a glass of red wine a day is very good for you.

According to the Catholic Church, transubstantiation turns the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ.

According to Trump, Haitians are eating people's cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.

According to Mother Teresa, the biggest threat to world peace is abortion.

According to my neighbour, 5G masts will make our brains compliant with however the Deep State wants us to behave.

According to Liz Truss, Kier Starmer should cease and desist from defaming her 'reputation' by claiming she crashed the economy.

According to the Daily Mail, alcohol of any kind is very bad for you.

According to that weird couple in the pub, white people in the UK are being systematically replaced by brown people.

According to statistics 50% of people in the UK are of below average intelligence.

According to Elon Musk, the prevalence of DEI in the Los Angeles fire department meant more people died in fires as not enough firefighters were white men.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, we don't need fact-checkers on social media anymore.

According to my Dad the best slippers are to be found in Swansea.

Ethics or Morals?

The difference: simply put, morals are our personal code of behaviour, while ethics are more of a societal code, for example medical ethics and the social mores of things such as dinner parties, fairness, generosity, helping; that kind of thing. Principles that keep our society fair and just.

I can confuse myself very easily these days, so what do I want to talk about? Ah yes, these statistics.

According to JL research, when asked whether running the UK with a strong leader who doesn't have to bother with parliament or elections:

61% of 18-34 year olds agreed.

49% of 35-54 year olds agreed.

29% of over 55s agreed.

Generations of people who’ve come into this world with no concept let alone interest of anything that preceded their existence, even by a generation. As ethics is not taught, nor social history, it would seem little wonder they have no appreciation and completely take for granted the rights they have in a liberal democracy, which previous generations struggled for and who some even gave their lives for. 

Feminism for example. I can think of young women who say they're not feminists but who would be horrified at the world even 15-20 years ago. 

As LP Harltey said: 'The past is a different country. They do things differently there.'

Fran Liebovitz said of the 'me too' movement that up until this point she just accepted the world had always been a sexist patriarchy, and then suddenly it just changed seemingly last week. 

But it’s taken centuries to get to this point, and a lot of brave individuals putting themselves into the spotlight and often paying the consequences.

We have huge problems in our society. Extremist and populist groups are very good at exploiting these things, offering simple solutions to very complicated, difficult problems, usually in the form of blaming this group or that for our woes.

This ties in with the recent US election and their culture wars, where the Democrats were accused of only paying attention to women's rights, when boys' educational standards are dropping, male suicide is trending upwards, and males just hear they are to blame for the bad stuff in the world.

Here is a terrific interview with a guy called Richard Reeves who runs a think tank in the States, and has written a book called "Of Boys and Men". Instead of using emotive language and blaming huge sections of society with phrases like 'Toxic Masculinity" he says we can emancipate women and help young men at the same time. We don't just have to help one group at a time.

I'm also shallow and male enough to say I don't think I'd be able to speak if Desi Lydic interviewed me. She's so beautiful, smart and funny I'd probably melt into a giggling puddle of patheticness.

Tiredosity

It's been pretty cold here in Northern Europe. It is winter after all. 

I always think my wanting to stay in bed at this time of year is atavistic for when our pre-human incarnations hibernated.

It's so lovely under my duvet. It really is. 

There's plenty of room...

But you should know I sleep with my socks on - restless feet. And wearing socks to bed is proven to help you get to sleep faster!

And of course it is very sexy.

Gaming

The other day when I Dungeon Mastered a 2-day Dungeons and Dragons adventure for the Pilton delinquents, I was very tired. It took me about 5 days to get over it in the end. 

Cue massive lie-ins at the weekend.

In fact gaming is coming back online - Thursdays, Mondays, and now Wednesdays , and the occasional Friday. Hurrah.

I DM'd last night - Thursdays have been erratic for a while now but I think we're back online now, even though we meet up in person. A new Wednesday session via an online platrform with Jono, Larry and Adrian is forthcoming, and the Mondays we (Sacha, Boyd, Tim Eddie and I) play on Zoom is going well.

Thank the gods. I need gaming. I need that dopamine hit, I need to fuel my imagination, I need to interact with other humans, I need to riff and do arithmetic and descibe incredible scenes to people. 

I got really excited before the game, picturing the journey the party makes underwater on the back of a whale. So I was able to describe it really well.

The previous part of the adventure was a mess, but this is far more tangible in my mind, and by all accounts we had a better experience as a group because of that.

In other news, Tomos (the spaniel who I walk every weekday)is very naughty at the moment. He's nearly 2 which I guess equates to being a teenager. He's very naughty and he's a terrible coprophagiac.

In fact, he's acting like a punk rocker.

I'm rambling.

"Here lies Reginald Iolanthe Perrin. He knew not the names of the flowers, the plants and the trees, but he did know the strawberry dessert figures for Schleswig-Holstein."

Oh, to be a starfish...

Quantum decline

You take it for granted for ages. The “situation” in the background, you know, [whispers] dementia!

Then you go through a couple of days of a trough, which turns into 5 or 7, and you realise you’ve taken a small but significant step down in your abilities.

Concentration at an all time low. Every time I try to read and prepare for D&D the detail of most of it is lost, so much so at times that when it comes to running the game it feels like I’m reading the passage for the first time. 

My prep is like this: procrastinate, procrastinate, read half-heartedly, procrastinate, read thoroughly and make notes, do nothing on the day of the game, read the notes haphazardly in a hurry - eyes darting all over the page - ditto for the actual original text, then run game. 

It’s an effort. Fuck I wish it wasn’t like this. Am I getting away with it? 

I asked and one person said it was noticeable how I'm not as on it as I once was but it was still really good, and the other person said they hadn't detected any decline at all. 

I like to think I’m experienced enough to provide a decent experience for everyone - myself included.

Suffice to say this is the new reality. 

Also some occasional minor hallucinations: white objects like my Apple mouse which in my peripheral vision suddenly burst into view like a firing flash gun set at F2.

I’m going to have to up my dose of Sertraline from 100mgs to 150mgs for a while. Finding it all a bit difficult. The noise of busy pubs; sitting indoors, not finding any satisfaction in YouTube clips or much else for that matter. 

Like a smoker who can’t afford cigarettes, or the straight-jacketed man with itchy balls. 

Just restless: an unquenchable thirst for a drink that doesn’t exist. 

At least I can still string a sentence together, spot typos, grammar errors and punctuation errors (are they ever not errors these days?) with alarming speed - like Robocop spotting perps in his multiple cross-hairs.

My handwriting still receives compliments. 

Forgetting my multiplication times tables now. Had to think what 7x8s were. Known them off by heart since I was 9.

You lucky, lucky bastard.

And you 'n all.

Politics 

I still think I’m over-qualified for Trump's cabinet.

I’m not a rapist, or a tax evader, or a fraud of any kind. In fact I haven’t done anything to be pardoned by him yet. 

So no ambassadorships or secretary of state jobs.

I am completely unqualified for any post in government, which oddly enough would actually make me qualified in this (mad) instance.

I’m better informed than Tulsi Gabbard who repeats verbatim RT propaganda like a Talking Barbski doll-bot and of course RFK Jr who seems to be just a very damaged person through drug-use and personal trauma.

Despite my dementia I’d be much better than this shower.

Trouble is the MAGA crowd would accuse me of being a DEI pick and that wouldn’t be a good look for Trump or Project 2025.

Sod it then. It's CEO of the World Bank for me.

Plutocrats 

Just as Elon Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars getting the stooge known as Trump back into office, the Reform Party is Musk's next project. They are of course natural bedfellows.

Another one in the mix is Nick Candy - the property developer, who in a Sunday Times interview today quite openly speaks about his fondness for Saudi Arabia and its society: its great quality of life and law and order.

Wow. Think about this for a moment. Saudi and many of the Emirates states have the most appalling human rights records, a catalogued history of indentured workforces, the scandal about the workers who built the Burj Khalifa and many other erectile dysfunction buildings in that part of the world.

But what amazes me these days is that somehow, at some point the concept of democracy became devalued. People now speak openly about appalling regimes and dictators as though these are great people running great societies. The MAGA movement led by Trump, Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard praising Victor Orban, Poot'n, Xi of China. All autocrats with appalling human rights records, especially for women and LGBTQ+.

I just can't believe how up-front they are about it too. There's almost no attempt to hide their undemocratic leanings. I assume they operate in echo-chambers for them to think this is 'normal'.

These billionaires who manipulate the media like never before are out to get even richer, dividing the wealth of the world up between themselves like the oligarchs they are, depending on ordinary people to vote them in.

Already Trump is pulling back on his promise to make groceries more affordable - one of the promises he made in the election.

I cannot believe we've come to this point. People died in the Peasant's Revolt, The Peterloo Massacre, Chartism, Trades unions and the suffragette movement, to have human rights, to be recognised by those holding power as fellow humans with a stake in society ie. the vote.

Is it that history has become irrelevant due to ignorance?

- Forget it G - that happened a long time ago. It's history.

- What, like Jesus?

If it looks like fascism smells like fascism and acts like fascism, it's probably fascism. 

I've lost friends who have swallowed this shit hook line and stinker. And I'm prepared to lose more any who fall into this vortex of bigotry and hatefulness.

They're laughing at us.

And finally...

Had to throw 2 pairs of pants out this week: structural integrity of the gusset. Quite the disappointment. These things all happen at the same time don’t they? Waves of exploding heels on socks, disintegrated gussets and holes in your favourite t-shirts. 

These things happen in clusters don't they?

One thing’s for sure, I shan’t be buying nylon pants ever again.