While true crime is enjoying something of a spike in popularity, let’s not treat it like a recently discovered, previously untapped mine of compulsive entertainment. People have been getting their kicks from vivid descriptions of gory violence and proximity to psychopathy since the true crime section sprang up in WH Smiths.
I know. I was there.
Continue reading “Coercive Control: He Hit Me… (& It Felt Like A Kiss)”
The pizza at Auschwitz is great.
I thought about the propriety of that sentence the moment it popped into my head, while sitting on a rubber block in the car park eating the aforementioned snack, which was a thin and crispy vegetarian slice cooked to perfection in a small booth to the right of the museum entrance. I tested it on my mother when I returned home and she curled her lip. I was admonished for saying it, as I expected.
It’s not what you go there for, is it?
Imagine, for a second, that you don’t exist. Not in any meaningful sense of the term, anyway. You have consciousness, you have awareness, but no body, no sensation, no emotion. Like that scene in The Matrix where Neo wakes up in that vat of slime and realises he’s basically one fancy battery among millions.
I suppose it would be odd if I didn’t write something about depression in Mental Health Week. But ironically, I’m currently depressed, and more ironically still, unlike all the artists I love and admire, I’m not inspired to greatness by suspension in my own misery.
Continue reading “Mental Health: Weak”I’ve never been particularly comfortable with Caitlyn Jenner’s transition.
That bothered me.
Embed from Getty Images
By resigning from his position as technical director of British cycling, Shane Sutton has instantly become the poster boy for those who believe that women aren’t capable of coping with the rigorous, often unpleasant realities of competing in elite sport.
Phone-ins and social media networks are alight with righteous indignation propelled voices claiming that if women can’t stand the intensity of the motivational tactics (which may or may not include verbal sparring and insults) required, perhaps they should reacquaint themselves with the more suitable challenges of the kitchenette.
You could say that drawing attention to this sort of thing is giving the trolls what they want.
That Toby Young will be reclining on his chaise longue this morning, clad in smoking jacket and dragging on the big old Cuban parked between his educated lips while he cackles at the outrage his Daily Mail article provoked.
I recently wrote a piece for my other love, The Football Ramble, about the minefield that is celebrating a sporting achievement by someone who espouses unconscionable views or, as is more likely these days, inappropriate sexual behaviour.
You can read it here, if you care to, but I know many of you instantly drop into a coma when football is mentioned, so I’ll precis it.
I conclude that there has to be a separation between achievement and the individual, because the alternative is to fully endorse everything the subject has done in their life, even if you don’t know about it.
It’s not a comfortable position, especially when you’re dealing with the likes of Tyson Fury, but what alternative is there? To not admire anyone or anything ever, in case the person involved turns out to have views that differ from your own?
I’ll take my chances, if that’s ok.
Is everyone clear now?
Although I have to say, Zakia, if you’re going to insist on using words like ‘pluralism’, ‘multitude’, ‘condemn’ and ‘hear’, you’re almost certainly going to confuse your target demographic.
Anyone with half a brain has, after all, worked this out for themselves.
Kelly Welles 