[finding the one] you'd go the whole wide world?

This is how it started.

I wanted to put some music up to finish the evening and was rummaging round in YouTube when I remembered a pub do in Australia years ago with Wreckless Eric. Pretty poor selection in YouTube on him - mostly couples using the song as a wedding vid or whatever.

Just about to give up when I thought I'd give this one a try. It was the comments section which did it - wow, this guy was really pouring it out about his lost love. Checked out the first part of the vid - seemed a nice enough guy, then caught this comment by him:

It doesnt matter that there are millions of girls in the universe. It's about one girl and what she meant to me, how she had me believe in a future with her and her great family, an incredible love and connection I've never experienced ..... and so on.

Someone replied:

But... if she can't celebrate who you are, and doesn't appreciate you at all, do you really want to be with her? Everyone deserves to be with someone who loves them back. Don't waste one more minute of your life missing someone who doesn't care about you.

He replied:

Sad sad days. It breaks my heart. Wow over 10 000 hits on my stupid stupid video all about how much I love some girl who completely destroyed my heart.

Whole load of feelings swirling around now. First is that sooner or later someone is going to tell him to stop being a wimp but I say good luck to him - let it all out. Some commenter called Adrift replies:

The last rite of passage into manhood my friend is, the broken heart/dream. Women despise what they perceive as a weak, or, needy man. The best thing you can ever do is, stand tall, and "Walk Like A Man". Pal, never look back. Move on knowing, it is her loss.

Yeah, easier said than done, I'm thinking. Been there where you'd do anything to turn it round but once a woman's decided, there's no going back. Now comes the first woman's comment:

YOUR SO STUPID! its about that he has no one and he remembers what his mom says and does that. AND HE SEARCHES THE WHOLE WORLD TO FIND HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! STUPID!!!!

Well thank you dear, for that. Sure helps our friend here, doesn't it?

At this point I half agree with her that it IS stupid placing your heart in another human's hands because he/she doesn't have the mental equipment to take good care of it. You've opened the last door to the inner citadel, my friend and she's gone in, looked about and then spat on the floor.

Poor bstd.

Humans are weak and selfish. They don't appreciate what they have until it's gone and then often not and I've been in both camps, as most of you have too. You know, this is undignified the way this man is laying it all out - I wouldn't give anyone the satisfaction any more - and yet I feel his pain tonight, as apparently, have a few thousand others, judging by the stats.

And well meaning homilies don't help, do they? That pain is bitter for sure.

Sigh. And yet we do it over and over.

Would you do it again?

[Pretty nifty song too, by the way, if you'd care to listen. Original comments here.]

[blogfocus saturday] check these out

You might like to look at:

Beaman's take on China's preparation for the Olympics.

The Quiet Man, who has an interesting piece on Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz's Libel Tourism.

Andrew K. Brown's revelations about the new secessionist State of Lewisham:

...our citizenship ceremonies, our celebration of Lewishams armed forces...

Bob Piper's superb sense of humour - I haven't had this good a laugh for many a year - thanks, Bob:

RIPA wasn't introduced by Big Brother to spy on Winston Smith, but as a way of giving some sort of framework to protect Winston from his Big Brother

The Rev. Dr. Incitatus, who appears to be another with an interest in Penguins.

[saturday quiz] special bumper polio victim edition

All of these people below were polio victims. Match their occupations with their names:

1. Ben Bradlee

2. Ian Dury

3. J. Robert Oppenheimer

4. Franklin Delano Roosevelt

5. Donald Sutherland

Occupations:

a] hit people with rhythm sticks, b] enjoyed bad boy roles, c] helped expose Watergate, d] mad bomber, e] stole the nation's gold

Answers in white below - need to highlight:

1c, 2a, 3d, 4e, 5b

Poliomyelitis is:

1.
a] curable with Xenotobin 3X
b] incurable to date
c] curable depending on how it was transmitted

2.
a] infectious
b] contagious
c] can't be transmitted

3.
a] preventable by vaccine
b] endemic to most of the world today
c] impossible to prevent

Answers in white below - need to highlight:

1b. 2b. 3a

[criminalization] where once there was innocence

The Reactionary Snob points out:

I admit my knowledge of RIPA is not what it should be but I'm not certain that trying to get a child into a school (even if the parents are intending to move out of the catchment area) is a 'serious crime'.

Stephen Pollard notes:

But surely the real point of this story is not the law under which such investigations were carried out, or their efficacy. It's rather the sheer lunacy of a school system in which catchment areas and bureaucratic diktat matter and which entails such checks.

I say the real point of the story as the iniquitous RIP Act in the first place, criminalizing where once there was no criminality.

[price creep] the books you once loved to browse

You need to read the fine print with Wat Tyler:

But the thing is this. In the days before the internet, public libraries made vast amounts of knowledge and kultur freely available to everyone. And somehow, that seemed A Good Thing.

Imagine his surprise then, when his local library recently charged him £22.40p.

This is a prime example of charging creep. A close relative of stealth taxation, charging creep is where your public sector supplier surreptitiously charges ever more for services that were once free - or virtually free - at the point of use.

So though the worthy gentleman is talking specifically of fines and entry to the library is presumably still free, still - the basic premise stands. Keep your eye on what goes on in libraries because this must needs be one element of the new feudalism - constraint of knowledge.

[ian dury] showed what could be done

I love men and women who carve their own way in life, inspired by an idea or a potpourri of influences. Often bawdy, irreverent and wrong:

sex and drugs and rock 'n roll are all my brain and body need

but always with a wry humour in there somewhere, I can't side with the moralists here, of which I am one. People like Ian Dury somehow transcend all that:

looking like some spivvy Cockney update of a Dickensian villain - the punks were suitably impressed

Already a polio victim, he succumbed in the end to cancer:

Here was a man already in his mid-thirties who looked crippled but dangerous, and had an armoury of quite extraordinary songs, ranging from the realistically romantic to the outrageous. He could belt out a thoughtful rock song like Sweet Gene Vincent, and then introduce a distinctive Essex spin.

Love him or loathe him and admittedly he couldn't hold a note but hey, he was unique:



Blue Gene baby

Skinny white sailor, the chances were slender
The beauties were brief
Shall I mourn your decline with some thunderbird wine
and a black handkerchief?
I miss your sad Virginia whisper
I miss the voice that called my heart

Sweet Gene Vincent
Young and old and gone
Sweet Gene Vincent

Who, who, who slapped John?

White face, black shirt
White socks, black shoes
Black hair, white strat
Bled white, died black

Sweet gene Vincent
Let the blue cats roll tonight
At the sock hop ball in the union hall
Where the bop is their delight

Here come duck-tailed Danny dragging Uncanny Annie
She's the one with the flying feet
You can break the peace daddy sickle grease
The beat is reet complete
And you jump back honey in the dungarees
Tight sweater and a pony tail
Will you guess her age when she comes back stage?
The hoodlums bite their nails

Black gloves, white frost
Black crepe, white lead
White sheet, black knight
Jet black, dead white

Sweet Gene Vincent
There's one in every town
And the devil drives 'till the hearse arrives
And you lay that pistol down

Sweet Gene Vincent
There's nowhere left to hide
With lazy skin and ash-tray eyes
and perforated pride

So farewell mademoiselle, Knickerbocker Hotel
Farewell to money owed
But when your leg still hurts and you need more shirts
You got to get back on the road