Laughing At Awful Things

I don't know about you but sometimes I'm convinced my brain operates differently than other brains. It's sick and twisted and finds humour in subject matter that isn't really meant to be funny. It might well be an inbuilt coping mechanism but I'm not exactly sure. I find human behaviour interesting, especially behaviour that is a little different from the norm. Suicide is just such one of those interesting behavioural decisions.

Now generally day to day I don't think much about suicide, in truth would never have crossed my tiny mind had I not read two articles in a newspaper, one on the subject of suicide and the other on the state of feminism in today's world. This was all it took for my mind to go on a little journey to the dark side. For some reason after reading this paper my brain decided throughout the rest of the day to merge the two subjects together and go off in strange tangents like I'm sure only my brain can. You may think this sounds rather egotistical of me, but trust me you don't want a brain like mine. It's a little messed up in there.

For example at one stage I was thinking abut some of the raw statistics when I realised that as I was thinking that someone somewhere was contemplating ending it right there and then. The odds are pretty high that someone is thinking of doing the same now as you are reading this. Do you ever think of things like that? I do! Why? I don't know, but that's how my brain works.

Something else I thought about, and this is where the two separate subjects merged in my head, was the fact that if women want to be considered truly equal with men they have to commit suicide in greater numbers. Why? Well for some strange reason men aren't considered good multi-taskers but we are great at suicide? When guys decide enough is enough and its time to end it all they are generally successful at it. Women on the other hand not so much. Women are 3 times more likely to try to kill themselves but men are 4 times more likely to have the the word SUICIDE stamped on his chart by the coroner. That's a serious swing right there and its also something feminists never speak about when they advocate for an equal world. Maybe its tough being at the top?

Don't get me wrong I don't find suicide funny, I don't advocate it, but neither am I judgemental of those who do have suicidal thoughts. I don't much wonder about the reasons. I think I can understand it, life is hard sometimes, there could be many reasons for it and with the credit crunch maybe there are even more reasons now than there was a few years ago.

What I wonder is where people find the time. It would be well down on my list of priorities. People are always wanting something from me, if it was something I was considering the bastards just wouldn't let me do it.

There a lot of myths about about suicide, the two most popular being that it is a sin and that it is selfish. Do you know how suicide became a sin? Moses didn't bring the word of God down a hill and say suicide is bad - don't do it. In fact for for centuries the most popular place to kill yourself was on church property. Why? In villages and towns everywhere church buildings tended to be the tallest building around for miles. It was convenient to do it in a church, especially if you knew when you jumped (or is it fall, I'm never quite sure?) you were less likely to survive with a rather painful broken leg. After a while the church got fed up with the cleaning bills. Any forensic investigator or episode of CIS will tell you that blood is very difficult to remove. Cleaning up blood is an expensive business. The solution to expensive cleaning bills – make suicide a sin. Overnight suicide rates in church grounds dropped.

As for selfish? Really? In these days of diminishing resources, rising food bills and consumerism that is raping and pillaging the planet maybe choosing to end it all is one of the few acts of selflessness we have left. I mean seriously if more people did it the price of oil would fall, food would easier to get by those remaining and the carbon footprint of the human population would be a little bit less too.

Another reason that it can't be a selfish thing to do is that its not exactly an easy pain free option to your problems. I don't know about you but I do know I couldn't do it. I wouldn't know where to begin. Shooting myself isn't an option because I don't own a gun and despite what the papers like to portray it isn't that easy to get a hold of one in this country. I wouldn't know where to go. I don't live in a country where guns are as easy to buy as a can of beer. Even if I did, I don't know how to shoot. I could just point and pull the trigger and hope for the best but sometimes when I'm doing something for the first time I mess up. Knowing my luck I would miss every vital organ and end up with a hole that I would have explain for the rest of my sorry life. Or worse wear a hat to cover it up – I look stupid in a hat.

I could try overdosing on the contents of the medicine box, but seeing as it can take me 3 hours to swallow one headache pill I'd probably mess up on that too and end of with nothing much worse than the runs. No, suicide is not an easy option, its hard.

You can't just jump off a bridge! It takes planning. A teenage girl in New York the other day fell 14 floors and survived. Knowing my luck I'd the exact same thing. Only I would feel even more suicidal because of the pain of the broken bones, but the broken bones would inhibit such an action.

It would be much easier to drink myself to death and in fact that is like a national past time in this country by a certain element of society especially amongst those who like to stay up until 3am on a Saturday night. But that's a long term approach, that takes dedication and I generally get bored of anything that requires that amount of commitment.

Tying myself to the rail tracks would probably be a waste of time because there is so much engineering works going on by Railtrack that Scotrail probably wouldn't be running any services on the line that day. I would probably have to go for a toilet break so as not to make a mess of my underwear and just at that moment a 26 truck coal train would roll past.

I suppose I could like others cut myself to see if I like the idea first but I'm kind of allergic to pain and quite frankly its kind of messy. Death by a thousand cuts just doesn't hold much appeal. Must be even harder for those who faint at the sight of blood.

There is always the old rope and chair trick but who nowadays owns rope? Sailors maybe. Tug-o-war hobbyists? I suppose you could go to B&Q and buy some, theres 10% off day on a Wednesday - you could get yourself a bargain just before you do the deed. Of course you could always put it on your credit card and not have to pay for it – that must a tempting idea to those who have more money worries than they can handle. A sort of sweet revenge on the visa company. But if you are going to jump off a chair with a rope around your neck you better hope you remember how you gained your knot making badge during your day in the scouts, otherwise thats going to be a long slow death or one painful visa bill when you have to pay for a rope at 20% interest that you have no use for.

Choosing to end it all and how is one thing but then there is the suicide note. In some ways I might find that even more difficult. I find this blog difficult enough at times and really, sorry to tell you this, but I don't care how people read this. But a suicide note has got to be much harder. I'm dyslexic, so sometimes I really struggle with my choice of words. Not a good thing to suffer from when it is your last opportunity to say a few words to your nearest and dearest in an uncaring world. What's more if you could express myself you possibly wouldn't be feeling suicidal in the first place. What do you write? Do you need to specify a date, or do you make the coroners day more interesting by allowing them to calculate the time from the state and growth of the maggots? Now that would be selfish! You are going to spoil someone's dinner, especially if the coroner is just new on the job.

Then there is how do you begin? To whom it may concern seems a little impersonal don't you think? Besides if you plan your death right you might time it so that those who made you want to do it are the ones to discover your body. Dear Mum and Dad? Can't help thinking that leaves out the wife and miserable brats who are going to survive you? See not so easy is it? How about?

Hey Guys!

Hope you are good! I am not good!

You are the ones who drove me to do this! I was doing just fine until you had to come and mess things up. I do hope that you happy now that I am dead.

Signed by the foul smelling rotting corpse in this room

PS Fuck you all. That insurance money you were relying on has a special no pay out on suicide policy. Kinda clever don't you think? That's why I took the time to write this note.

Ok so maybe suicide is a selfish act.

Now if you laughed at any of this welcome to the Laughing At Awful Things club. If you didn't? Thanks! Thanks for confirming my suspicion that my brain is a little messed up.

A Change From The Usual Programming

I don't, generally speaking, do movie reviews, for a few reasons really:

• I rarely get to go the cinema.
• I don't think most people care what I think, plenty of people can say it better than I could hope to.
  
• I'm not a critic, if I don't have something positive to say I would rather say nothing at all. I don't think its my place to criticise unless its something really atrociously bad - then its fair game!
• Besides - if I took movie reviewing seriously I might have to watch Sex In The City which holds no interest for me. Those two or three hours could be better spent elsewhere. And believe me I would watch that before I would watch some of the other crap out there.

But, I'm going to break a habit of a blogging lifetime. I decided that it was about time I actually made some time for me and spent a couple of hours at the GFT (Glasgow Film Theatre) watching Mongol. I love the GFT, its a beautiful old fashioned cinema building. It only has the two cinemas which are quite small by today's standards but the Art Deco interior is stunning compared to the rather bland huge multiplex cinemas that have largely replaced the traditional cinemas of old.

Anyway the film. Mongol is a gorgeous piece of photography and is well worth watching for that alone. The landscape of the Mongolian and Kazakhstan is truly stunning and the film makes the most of this backdrop to create what is a beautiful film. The acting isn't bad either. I'm not entirely sure I buy the story that the reason for Temudjin conquering and uniting the warring Mongolian tribes was due to him falling in love with a girl at the age of 9. It makes a nice story but from what I've read of the history of Genghis Khan it probably came about more due to a combination of circumstances, luck, opportunity, and no small amount of ambition rather than love of a good woman who he met as a prepubescent boy.

Besides there is supposedly 16 million men in the world today who according to geneticists can trace their origin to one man in Mongolia who was alive around the aggressive foreign policy of Genghis Khans rein. Now call me a cynic if you want but the thought that Temudjin would unite the tribes of Mongolia through the love of a good woman and then spread his love around so seems a little unlikely. Of course geneticists can't say for sure that Genghis Khan was the man in question but he probably had more opportunity than most seeing as he was top boss so to speak and probably had more opportunity than most under him.

Anyway the plot may not ring true, but it is a nice story nonetheless it just goes to show that its not only Hollywood that can rewrite history to suit the creative process - the Russian film industry can do the same. Perhaps wisely the film Mongol only addresses 34 years of Temudjin's early political life and steers clear of the story of raping, pillaging and concubines. That's not to say its all sweetness and light, there are a few bloody scenes but it was a violent time in the history of Mongolia so a little blood spillage is to be expected. However even the battle scenes were handled quite artistically.

If you don't mind watching a film with subtitles you could do far worse things with 2 hours of your time. There is a nice moment in the film where Temedjin is speaking to his young daughter and teaching her the word for meat and justifies this word as the reason for Mongolian being the most beautiful language in the world. A nice scene in itself and probably the writers justification to its Russian/German backers that for sake of authenticity it had to be acted in Mongolian, a language that few of its intended audience would understand.

Go watch it, and if you don't like it I'll let you throw popcorn in my direction. Honest I won't duck.

Whenever God Shines His Light

No I'm not getting all religious on you, I was just listening to grumpy old Van Morrison as I was writing this and the title seemed apt.

Sometimes getting home from work at 6:30am when the sun is already up and most everyone else are only just contemplating rising out of bed gets old. But on a gorgeous summer's day with blue skies and fantastic light its best not to waste it by going to bed, far better to go for a long walk - especially if you have a camera and 6 day old 30mm 1.4 in your bag. Can I just say I love this lens, I may only have used it ta couple of times and still getting used to it but damn its a lot of fun, so much so it was 4 hours before I got home and that was after a 12 hour shift. I really need to get out more.

I'm convinced that this lens (with its very nice bokeh - thats the blurred out of focus background) in hands better than mine could make just about anything beautiful but it would be nice if someone made a lens that can make me feel comfortable in front of the camera that didn't involve an expensive and painful make-over, but now I'm just being silly.

Everybody's Got A Story

I don't know about your reason but I like to read blogs because I like a good story. I've liked story telling since I was an itty bitty thing when I practically forced my mother to reread the Billy Goat's Gruff again and again on a nightly basis, much to her distress - yes I was an evil child.

I also like to travel, I don't do as much of that as I wish I could - if I had my way I would be a lazy bugger who wouldn't do any work and would travel the world by balloon and land, whereever the wind had taken me, whenever I was running out of gas, but I can't do that that blasted thing called work gets in the way and so when I get time I read the stories of other people that way my mind gets to travel even though my passport hasn't been exotically stamped.

It seems everybody today has access to a camera - whether it be a digital compact, a fancy slr or a camera phone - every picture tells a story, and we all live in interesting places, maybe not to ourselves but to others and so I thought why not create a new blog. A co-operative blog if you like, a blog called something like Our World (title undecided - come up with a better title if you like) where people from around the world in exotic and not so exotic locations come together and share picture stories of subjects that interest them. The chosen subject could be anything - I personally might be tempted to do a photo story on Scottish church buildings, not because I'm particularly religious - I'm not, religion and religionists tend to get in the way of me being religious but despite this for some reason I do have a weird thing for churches. I like the fact that every village or town in Scotland has a solid stone church building at its heart and each building though in some ways similar to the church(es) in the previous village or town is also in some ways architecturally unique. For some reason those church buildings to me speak about the Scottish landscape as much as the rolling green fields and purple heathered mountains and golden eagles.

I might even do a picture story with trees, another thing I have a fondness for, for no apparent reason other than maybe I'm an old hippy at heart, or maybe its my landscaping background or maybe its because I'd rather be a free loving bonobo than a mean old traffic warden (remember that blog?).

Now those are stupid random things and I could possibly come up with more interesting things to share than those two ideas I came up with off the cuff, well I hope I can but nonetheless it would be a very boring blog if it was all about me. To be an interesting blog it needs diversity. It needs people with interesting things to say, and show, to take part. And that means YOU. Yes YOU who is reading this now, don't think I can't see you looking I can, it needs You to take part too. The finest tapestry takes patience to sow and the ability to wait for each thread to support a bigger picture. The more people who take part the more diverse it will be. So come on, join in and sign up, add you name to the comments here and if you go outside take you camera with you and if you see something worth sharing take a few snaps and tell your story. Its not the quality of the camera that matters, noone will judge your camera work its the story behind the pictures that matters and if they have are self proclaimed art critics out there, they will have to be careful with what they say because they won't be the one deciding if their comment gets published or not. So come on, sign up and share something about your world. Or are you just going to lurk and play chicken?

Just Scotsman Destroying A Myth

Along the way in the sands of time there has been a myth perpetrated that Scots are a friendly people who are welcoming to visitors. I suspect this myth was first penned by a Scot who wasn't feeling very good about himself after the Scottish national football team had performed badly at yet another World Cup.

I can't be sure, seeing as I wasn't there when the first person got the myth under way but I have a feeling it went something like this -after a particular humiliating game in the history of Scottish sporting achievements (or lack of) a few whiskies were drunk, sorrows drowned before someone stood up at the back of the publican house and said with much slurring "Och a ken we'll never win the World Cup, but see us, we're great we are, we know how to have a good time, we know how to have a party. We might not be able to play a game of fitba but we're the friendliest people in the world we are." This was heard by someone who worked at the old Scottish Tourist Board sometime before it was renamed Visit Scotland who thought 'Ooh I can use that and get myself a nice bonus from the chairman and use the money to see some Spanish sun for two weeks.'

Like all myths it could have died before it took hold and was believed but this myth was helped to survive by reporters from Scotland Today running off to Glasgow Airport on a slow news day and shoving a microphone under the noses of American Tourists and asking the question "Well what did you think of Scotland then?" The unsuspecting tourist suffering a little from stage fright and eager just to get home by this stage had to think up something quick - "Scatland?".... (spelling deliberate).... "well it rained a lot but the people were friendly enough, even if I didn't know what they were saying and there was that day I walked into the pub toilet when they were shooting Trainspotting and Robert Carlyle beat me up, but I think he was only acting...." Scotland Today being the professional news show that it is ended the transmission at "Scatland? .... well it rained a lot but the people were friendly.." and so the myth grew and took hold.

I have deliberately used the word myth not because I'm too lazy to use a thesaurus, I do have other words in my vocabulary, but because I am a cynical bugger and don't much go in for the 'Wha's like us?' attitude of some Scots. I tend to think that one nationality is as good and as bad as one another. On a bad day we can all can all throw rocks and missiles at one another and on a good day can all hug and kiss one another - especially after a few whiskies have been drunk by one and all. I also think as far as Scotland is concerned its a lot of crap to be honest.

Let's face it, if we were really that friendly wouldn't we have a much easier to understand accent? Would the BBC have felt the need to use subtitles when showing the Scottish film Ratcatcher on the national televison network a couple of year ago if we as a people had learned to slow down when talking to the uninitiated ear?

And what about our place names? Our place names aren't all that friendly to the visitor either. Many people find it difficult to pronounce Scottish place names. At one point this probably had a purpose, for hundreds of years the only visitors likely to come calling were marauding English and Viking armies so in the days before GPS it was probably a good way to identify whether a stranger was friend or foe if they could or could not pronounce the name of the place they were asking directions for. Today though marauding armies have more sense that to come to Scotland, they get as far as Hadrian's wall, conveniently built by the Romans, and head south for somewhere drier.

Despite this though, we haven't renamed our place names to be more accommodating to the visitor. I'm Scottish and even I have had some trouble getting from one place to another. For years I lived just 5 miles from my great aunt who lived in Milngavie but at the age of 8 if I had wanted to visit her on my own and were to go asking the oh so friendly Scottish staff (don't make me laugh) at the bus station information desk the number of the bus to Milngavie they wouldn't have been able to answer me for laughing. Because at that age I didn't pronounce it in the correct manner, I pronounced it as I saw it written down and broke it into easy to say pieces Mil-in-gav-eh only the correct pronunciation is in fact Mill-guy. How you get Millguy from Milngavie to this day I have no idea, is it any wonder that Blogger as a little red line under it?

You may well think that the correct pronounciation matters not but there are a surprisingly large number of ill prepared tourists who begin their Scottish holiday in Milngavie before walking in their khaki shorts, in the rain, along the West Highland Way. We may not be able to do much about the rain or our most terrifying beast - the dreaded midge - but we could surely, if we were a friendly bunch of people, make it easier for the visitor to get from one place to another by making them easier to say. It's not only Milngavie that's difficult to say - apparently Edinburgh our capital city isn't that easy either nor are our much visited Lochs or just a few miles from the English border the town of Kirkcudbright, which is not pronounced Kirk-cud-bright but more like kir-could-bree. And then there is the charming remote little town on the West coast of Scotland where I worked for 3 months of last year but could not tell anyone because I could not say - Ardrishaig.

Pfft, Scots? Friendly? Aye to a point maybe. Just don't ask us to change our place names.

Some More False Colour Infra-red Shots