The Friday Thing 18th July 2005 - The Hope Springs Eternal Issue
PRIME SUSPECTS=
By Wednesday the country was 'aghast' at the probability that the bombers were not, as Mail readers had been hoping, illegal immigrants, but likely as not four 'ordinary lads' from West Yorkshire. As a result, alert yet small-minded citizens hoping to avert any fresh tragedy are now having to put aside their long-held prejudices with a sigh, and reprogramme their inner radar according to new stereotypical profiles. Glaring openly at meek olive-skinned men with beards and rucksacks will no longer be de rigeur - instead, prepare to get quietly hostile and reach for the nearest alarm when you come face to face with a whole new round of potential perps'n'traitors.
1) The bombers were apparently from the suburbs of Leeds. Listen out for flattened vowels, look out for flattened caps, and beware of unusually pristine-looking hand-raised pigeons. Such pigeons may blend in almost unnoticeably with the London natives, but may be stuffed full of Alka-Seltzer and ready to explode at any minute.
2) One suspect was said to be a 22-year-old sports science graduate. Look out for pissed-off ex-students upon whom the realisation is slowly dawning that although they know more than most people about tendons, they've just got themselves into huge debt for no actual advantage over other job-seekers, resulting in motivation enough to blow themselves, and as many non-graduates with good jobs as possible, to smithereens.
3) This same suspect was said to 'love football and cricket'. We always suspected it - people who like sport are mad and dangerous. If you see a large gathering of people in a sports ground, pub or park, chanting eerie incomprehensible calls to arms, phone the police. Look out for men with the distinctive physical attributes of beer bellies, slack jaws and rampant sunburn (their religion dictates that protective sun lotion is for poofs). If you hear anyone discussing England's form in therun up to the Ashes, punch them unconscious. It is your civic duty.
4) Another suspect, 19 years old, was described as being 'off the rails', but 'suddenly changed and became devoutly religious'. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that being a teenage lout, breaking people's windows and screaming at old people like in the Aphex Twin video for 'Come To Daddy' is in fact beneficial to society. If horrid children behave in an anti-social manner, spitting at you and kicking your shins, do not chastise them. Rather, smile indulgently and give them some sherbet. They may not know it, but they're doing their bit for a safer Britain.
5) Remember - the only way to be sure that you do not miss anyone suspicious is to be suspicious of everyone. Even yourself. The next time someone asks you if you packed your bag yourself, reply: 'Well, yes, but that doesn't mean there isn't a bomb in it, does it? I might have packed the bomb myself and could still answer truthfully that yes, I packed the bag myself. Just my say-so doesn't prove anything. Nor does my passport - terrorists still have identities, you know, and most of them don't even have any prior convictions before they embark on their final mission. I might not even know I've packed a bomb, I might have been under hypnosis at the time. I demand that you detain me just in case.'
* * *
LOSING THE WAR ON ABSTRACT NOUNS
=
The scary thing about terror in the modern sense, as is generally accepted, is that it's not actually there. You can't get at it. It's an abstraction, an idea - it uses people's reactions and emotions as weapons against themselves. This is why you can't attack it in the conventional sense - it's like Stan hitting Olly in the head with a two-by-four to get a fly. It is warfare by mindfuck. Thus it's only logical to deploy our own mindfuck, but rather a pleasant, peaceful, masturbatory, orgiastic sort of mindfuck.
So you get the pride thing. Pride means 'to take pleasure or satisfaction in an association', it says here. (The brewers of London Pride are doubtless bracing themselves for a spike in sales and a shiny new tear-jerking ad campaign, the swine.) Pride is also something that isn't really there, and if you're a fairly ordinary self-aware London-dweller then you probably feel a bit funny about it sticking its puffed-out chest in your face. You're not supposed to have pride, really. It makes you insufferable and cocky. You're supposed to blush and say 'crikey' and explain away all your achievements as 'oh nothing really'. And then publicly flay yourself for such immodesty.
It's an amorphous, dubious notion, and wherever it does pop up its lantern-jawed head in this country it isn't especially welcome. Pride means gushing first-time parents going on about first garbled exclamations of 'mmmrurflebuuu' and first instances of holding up giant wobbly heads, as if this were the first time an immature homo sapiens ever dared to try. Corpulent execs bragging about obliterating their targets, shopping at Snots of Savile Row, buying yet another brand-new gas-guzzler. Barely-sentient footie louts justifying their pointless existences and even more pointless arse-slapping rampages, mooing and mooning like twats. Tony Parsons. Scousers. And of course those hand-rubbing pronouncements on terrorist websites, gloating and crowing that 'Britain is burning with fear' and that the brave and mighty have done glorious things. Pride has many faces, most of them as alluring as the Home Secretary modelling for Agent Provocateur.
But just as there's no reason not to wear cowboy boots just because Posh has made them look a bit rubbish, there's no exclusivity where pride is concerned. It doesn't have to be dumb or misplaced or arrogant or a shield to hide your miserable worthlessness. It's a valid, human response to the sight and sense of lots of people pretty much shrugging off what was calculated to reduce them to quivering, sobbing wrecks. It's also very odd, because the most banal and inconsequential things will suddenly start to speak of dignity and stoicism. People getting on and off public transport, striding about wrapped up in their own concerns, shouldn't be anything to feel proud of. People being nervous and frightened isn't anything to be ashamed of, of course, and there isn't a hope of getting rid of that right away. But somehow, people just acting like ordinary people is something to salute. Which is why, although the timing of the London attack was great for silencing the Olympic hurrah, it was bollocks given that the WWII commemorations were days away. Londoners massed in recollection of their place in a noble line of tough leathery fender-offers, drank an ocean of tea, and said dry sarcastic things to each other about what a feeble effort the attack really was.
So in order to squeeze the juice from the bulging rotten grapefruit of terror, and maybe even boot the preposterous, oppressive, counter-productive Biblical notion of 'evil' from the modern lexicon, it's good to bump up the pride quotient. In the absence of physical defence, which you can't have, you've just got to use words and meanings, resolving outer threats in your own head. So it's also important to elevate the very normality of London travel. Embrace your obstreperous, petty inner grumbler. Roll eyes at delays. Mutter and swear when your Oyster card fucks up. Sigh when the pleasure of grabbing a comfy tube end-seat is tempered by the view of a tourist's peach polyester arse squashed up against the glass partition. Because each kilojoule of energy you expend on being peevish about the little things, just like you always did, is one that you're not using to worry and fear. It undermines the hell out of terrorism. 'Suspicious packages? Whatever. I just sat on some chewing gum in my new linen-mix trousers, you fucker.'
Given the choice between a lonely death - the thing most of us claim to fear the most - or an exit preceded by the communal experience of mass panic, we'd probably still choose neither. Death is nasty. Suicide bombers almost seem nastier. Language grants them far higher status than it should - the deaths of their victims are described as 'pointless', while by implication the deaths of their higher-purpose-filled killers are anything but. But they don't have a monopoly on death, as they seem to desire and we almost seem to bestow. Death comes in the form of too-big chunks of tofu, ironic allergies and sexual over-enthusiasm. Suicide bombers on transport aren't much more than just another modern hazard, like trains and traffic themselves. So you should worry about your weight. Fret about money. Chew your nails at the thought of having to tell your boring partner that it's not them, it's you. Go back to being preoccupied with the little stupid concerns of life and you suck all the energy and anger from the meticulous planning and ranting and attacking and manipulating of those silly, silly men. Not 'evil' men. Not even men. Silly boys.
And then what you can do, as Bush revs up the presses for another big batch of glossy WAR ON TURR posters and all this just rots down into political mulch, is eat an ice-cream, sniff a lily or fuck a Portuguese barrista. Do stuff. Just try not to think about Charles Clarke in a lace thong.
whateveryoudo@thefridayproject.co.uk
* * *
BAD MEDICINE
=
Mental illness, like Internet dating and saying 'fuck' in front of your parents, is almost acceptable nowadays. Pop stars and actors speak openly of their experience of going a bit funny - even the Wrath of Cruise fails to deter them. Visit your GP during one of your long dark weeks of the soul and you should expect to be treated with sympathy, respect and Good Drugs. But not so very long ago if you presented with a case of the low blues, you were liable to be hauled away, an ice pick stuck in your skull and thereafter shut in a loony bin until you passed away in a pool of your own drool. Indeed, lobotomisation was all the rage from the mid-30s right through into the 60s, and if you didn't like the idea at first, by jiminy, you'd be happy enough afterwards.
This week relatives of lobotomy patients argued for the Nobel Prize given to the inventor of this primitive procedure to be revoked, despite a couple of new books suggesting that at least, ooh, three people were helped by effectively having their heads sliced open and their brains buggered about with by bastards. The executive director of the Nobel Foundation called the bid a 'non-starter', whereupon a rangy Native American came in and put a pillow over his face. The debate as to the medical validity of the operation has raised important issues, not least whether or not the quip 'I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy' is actually funny, and whether George W. Bush would benefit from one. Or has already done so.
However, progress in medicine remains erratic, and seemingly life-saving drugs can have the funniest side effects (see the clip show of the same name on American TV). A study published on Monday describes the apparent links between Mirapex, a drug which alleviates the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease, and compulsive gambling. The trouble is that the drug tickles the brain's dopamine receptors, which are right next to the receptors for pleasure and reward-seeking behaviour, so you might find yourself grappling not only with the debilitating disease but with a sex or shopping addiction. Several patients who lost thousands after suddenly developing a lust for feeding slot machines are suing the makers of the drug. They're probably only after the money, though.
posted by lethalbuzzle @ 11:15 PM
<< Home