Getting Your Own Back

I was talking to the Tinkids this morning about political correctness, and about how it can sometimes be somewhat misguided, so I told them about the “sport” of Dwarf Throwing in the US, and of how, when PC determined that Dwarves should be referred to as Porgs (Persons Of Restricted Growth) one town changed the name of its contest to the Porg Throwing Contest, thus missing the point that the throwing of someone might actually be more offensive than what you call them while you’re doing it.

I then decided to look it up on Google to see if I could find out more about it. I typed in “Porg Throwing” and, to my surprise, about half way down the page I got a link to a post from last April by our own Twenty Major, with this excerpt:

There’s a place in the US where they have Annual Dwarf Throwing Contests. … growth) got the contest’s name changed to the Annual Porg Throwing Contest. …

Here we go, I thought, let’s see what Twenty said about it, I bet it’s really funny.

So I read the post, which is about the dumbing down of Newstalk, and is indeed really funny. But it doesn’t mention Dwarf or Porg Throwing. So the reference must have been in one of the 202 comments.

With the beginning of a sinking feeling in my stomach I read through the comments, and eventually found this:

There’s a place in the US where they have Annual Dwarf Throwing Contests. When PC came in, however, dwarves – who now insisted on being known as Porgs (persons of restricted growth) got the contest’s name changed to the Annual Porg Throwing Contest. Seemingly it was the name that was humiliating, not the fact they were being thrown.

(I always start to giggle when I think of this story, which is really, really mean, coz I’m only five foot five).

And yes, as I had feared, it was written by me.

In the interests of honesty I’ve printed the comment in full here, including the bit about the giggling. I know it’s wrong, but try to picture the contest in your head for a second.

See?

Anyway, I had no recollection of writing it till I read the next comment, which was from Jo (who I hadn’t met then) and said “Tinman, are you Bono?”

So there. Whenever you use the Internet to back up a point you’re making, make sure it’s not yourself that you’re quoting.

There He is, Gone

Just four days after I named Twenty Major’s blog among my 100 favourite things he’s gone and closed it down.

If this becomes a trend soon there’ll be no more sunrises, no more airports and no more Harry Potter books.

Anyway, today’s as good a day as any to tell the story of the one-and-only time I met Twenty. I had wandered in to Ron’s Bar in the mistaken belief that it was the Gresham (in my defence, the sun was in my eyes).  A lone figure was sitting at the counter sucking fiercely at a cigarette. A tiny sausage-dog which was lying at his feet sat up and yapped, though its voice was so high-pitched that only, well, dogs could hear him.

“Quiet, Throatripper,” said the man.

“Why do you call him that?” I asked.

“If he ever fought another dog he’d stick in his throat and choke him,” was the reply.

I laughed and offered to buy him a drink, which he accepted. He held out his hand. “Twenty,” he said. This may have seemed like a strange name, but when you’re called Tinman you tend not to mock other peoples’ names, unless they’re called Track or Trig, which would be just silly.

Twenty is taller than you’d expect from his blog, though this may be just because my laptop has a very small screen. He is a lively conversationalist, though his language is a little crude. I noticed, however, that he seemed a little dejected, and asked was anything the matter.

“I’ve just come from my aunt’s funeral,” he said. “Mathilda Major. She was 102, and one of the great patriots. She was an officer in the old IRA.”

“An officer? Was she called Major Major?” I asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous, no-one would be called that. She fought with all the greats – Connolly, Pearse, Howth Junction …”

“You mean she was in the GPO?” I asked.

“Yeah. Loads of times. That’s where she collected her children’s allowance.”

“No, er, I meant, it’s just, well, you said she fought with Connolly and all…..”

“And so she did. Fought with them all the time – called them gobshites and wasters.”

I felt at this stage like I was conversing in a bucket of treacle. “Anyway,” I said, “her funeral was today, you say.”

“It was. Full military affair. Guard of honour. Twenty Gun salute. And she was buried in a full army uniform. And, of course, in the special hat that all IRA members get buried in.”

He knocked back the last of the pint, walked to the door, and turned back to me.

“She wore the RA’s bury beret,” he said.

***************************************************************************************************

That’s my tribute to you, Twenty. Best of luck with all you do.

Making Holemaster Whole

A guy I know is going into hospital today. He’s going to have part of his lung removed, to get rid of a small but malignant growth. There are loads of us thinking of him.

None of us have ever met him, and his name is, er, Holemaster.

He’s one of the regular commenters on Twenty Major’s blog. Sometimes he tells us more than we need to know about his um, toilet habits. Other times he makes witty remarks. To show an example, I’ve gone into Twenty’s archive, picked an article at random and came up with this comment that he made:

“Hey imagine if D.I.D. Aldi and Lidl merged?

Didaldilidl
Lidldidaldi
Didlidlaldi
Aldididlidl”

Ok, that didn’t really work.

Anyway, if you spend enough time there you get a feel for who you’d get on with out in the real world, and HM seems to be one of the good guys.

On August 4th, after nagging encouragement from Jothemama (so called because she is a blog midwife), he started his own blog, ‘Esker Riada’.

On September 4th, after just fourteen posts, he wrote the post ‘Operation Holemaster – Post 1′, in which he told us of his doctor’s diagnosis, and that he was looking at surgery to remove the left upper lobe in his lung (Honestly, the lengths some people will go to to get commenters).

The great thing is how many comments he did get, both on his own site and on Twenty’s, all wishing him well. Because somehow we all feel that we know each other, and sad that one of our number is unwell.

Good luck with eveything, HM. Looking forward to a load of post about bedpans, hospital food and cute nurses soon.

Not Drowning, But Grumpy

On Thursday on Twenty Major’s site, a comment thread that started being about pigs and lipstick suddenly turned to bipolar disorders. People said things like:

“What makes me truly suspicious is the use of the word ’suffering’. ‘I suffer from bipolar depression’. ‘He suffers from ADHD’.”;

“But people who get depressed, or low, and claim to have manic depression are surely deserving of ridicule according to your piece.”;

“I think this is being facilitated by too many in the medical profession. People are always relieved to find there may be an explanation for why they feel bad, temporarily depressed or have problems interacting with the world around them.”;

“Or is it a good thing to do to give something a cooool name so people can say to each other triumphantly ‘I can explain why life isn’t working out for me- and the best thing is its treatable!!’ [rattles pillbottle].”

Jo from Infantasia and Problemchildbride fought back. Jo was the voice of reason, saying“What happens to the real sufferers if we just dismiss their conditions as invented or attention seeking?”.

PCB, whose own mother suffered from manic depression, wrote a brilliant rant, which included this part:

“So enough of this it’s all made up by Hollywood celebrities stuff. If you want to appear urbane or knowing or world-weary or coolly ironic or however the hell you want people to see you, I couldn’t give a flying fuck, I like to adopt that posture as much as the next person some days. We, the sane,medicated or otherwise, have that luxury. But just know that there might be some uppity bitch reading who is having a crap week and having to deal with shit from people not impertinent to this comment, who IS going to call you on it and tell you to refrain from being archly superior and just plain wrong on topics you are clearly not informed about.”

And I said nothing.

The problem is that many people do suspect that those who say they suffer from depression are really just unhappy. And those who suspect it most are the ones with the depression. Like me.

Last year I started blacking out for no apparent reason, and after various brain, blood and heart tests it was discovered that my heart-rate would sometimes slow so much that it would stop altogether. I was given a pacemaker and am now blackout free. Everyone knows about this, I’ve made no attempt to keep it secret. I joke about it, mock myself about it, and have even taken my blogging name from it (the 18 refers to the fact that a heart monitor that I was on revealed that one night my heart stopped for eighteen seconds).

In 2001, I was diagnosed with depression, and have been on medication on and off ever since. And I’ve told five people in seven years.

So, one illness I’ll discuss openly, and the other I’ll keep to myself. Because deep inside I fear that I’m just a big cod, that there’s really nothing more wrong with me than just being a grumpy git. I don’t know, but I’d guess that most depression sufferers (yes, sufferers, try it sometime) feel like that.

I know organisations like Aware are trying to fight the stigma attached to depression, the belief that it’s a failing rather than an illness, but they’ve a long haul ahead of them when the depressed themselves see it like that.

Even the fact that I’m not suicidal, because I just would not do that to my family, makes me think “see, there’s nothing really wrong with you”. (During all the medical crap last year there was a tiny part of me that thought “wow, if I die from this it’ll all be over, & I won’t have topped myself”).

When I get depressed over really stupid things, like a little boutique shop opening that I just know has no chance of surviving, or a recent one where I passed a bald man with a moustache and fell into a state about how ugly he was, how no-one would ever love him, and then how futile everything is, then my mind says “actually, you’re not depressed, you’re just mental”.

And the problem is I’ll never really be sure.

I’d Scream, You’d Scream

Over on Twenty Major’s site on Friday last he posted about the fact that they are playing David Gray’s ‘Babylon’ over and over again at the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to torture them. This led to a discussion about songs we’d hate to have continuously played at us.

That got me thinking – can you imagine what it must be like to drive an ice-cream van? The same one hurdy-gurdy tune over and over again, all day long?

How do you pick the tune? Does it just come with the van or is there a catalogue? If there is it’s a very small one, as they all seem to have either the Match of the Day theme, the Magic Roundabout theme or O Sole Mio.

You’d dread getting out of bed in the morning. You’d dread turning into each new estate.

I’m on my way to work at the moment, and suddenly feeling a whole lot better about my job.