Thersites Writes

Ah, pain - isn't it wonderful? The burning sharp stab of 'yaaarrrgh!!!' that kicks in when your lower back goes.... The throbbing pains that go down past the Gluteus Maximus through the hip and into the lower leg... The horrible feeling of not being able to walk or even stand up straight... The joys of having to stay in bed for days on end with nothing but Radio 4 for company... The endless drowsy tedium and the strange dreams that come from heavy painkillers...

It was my fault, of course. I was doing some light stretching exercises and suddenly felt a bit of pain. Too many years spent in front of a computer had weakened my lumbar region, leaving it atrophied and inflexible - that much I knew already. But a few minutes later the pain really kicked in and I could barely walk. I needed to get back to my halls of residence that day and I was desperate to get better, so I staggered on. Instead I nearly got stuck in the bath and haven't been able to have one for four days. The situation stinks on many levels.

But the worst bit of it is the loss of freedom. It seems unnatural to not be able to just walk to the toilet, go downstairs, pick something up, bend over or walk out of the door. But all that gets taken away when the pain kicks in: suddenly, ‘walking’ (or rather, ‘limping’) becomes a long, painful and humiliating experience.

As a result, I've worked my way around some of these problems and have had to learn new ways of moving. I need to lean up against the wall like a toddler just to hobble from bed to bog. Even sitting up is difficult and I have to break through the pain barrier every time I need to reach over for a cup of tea. And it's all down to one small area to the bottom left of my back - which now seems to be the most important part of my anatomy. Without it, I can't even cough properly or pull my trousers up without help.

On the other hand, the problem seems muscular in nature, meaning my spine's OK, and the injury is getting progressively better. Making myself stand up and walk when needed has been a helpful kind of ad hoc physiotherapy too, even if it's meant I've had to rely on my upper body, and anything I can prop myself up on, just to stay upright. My stomach muscles have taken some of the strain too; feeling worn but not injured. The upside, then, will be that I get stronger arms and abs from this. I'll also be trying to strengthen my lower back, albeit gently, so it doesn't happen again.

But I can't help but wonder what the lives of people with permanent back pain is like. How do they deal with not being able to move, eat, get dressed and perform any number of other normal tasks? The worst part of what happened to me was not the pain, but the lack of autonomy. Being able to run your own life is a blessing, and that's hard to do when you can't even turn over in bed without wincing.

So postal workers have decided to go on strike. It's suicide - not least because the last time they went on strike - 1996 - there weren't as many private sector rivals able to take up the slack. Plus, nor were there anyway near as many people who had access to and used e-mail. Or to put it another way: would YOU go on strike if your core market could just simply go somewhere else for your no-longer exclusive services?

More cynical souls might argue that this is just a prelude to the privitisation of the Post Office. Perhaps so, but it's not the first time a trade union has done its members in for a pound of flesh.

In the 80s I was cutting edge, it seems. My mother was terrified of paedophiles, cars and packs of feral youths. I agreed and stayed indoors or in the garden, like she wanted. It was remarked upon, especially by my father - who didn't like me much anyway, that this was very odd and unhealthy. But I chose to do it and could have just sneaked out if I wanted.

Children these days have caught up with me, while old-fashioned notions like choice have been cast aside:

The risk of abduction remains tiny. In Britain, there are now half as many children killed every year in road accidents as there were in 1922 - despite a more than 25-fold increase in traffic.

In 1970, 80% of primary school-age children made the journey from home to school on their own. It was what you did. Today the figure is under 9%. Escorting children is now the norm - often in the back of a 4x4.

We are rearing our children in captivity - their habitat shrinking almost daily. In 1970 the average nine-year-old girl would have been free to wander 840 metres from her front door. By 1997 it was 280 metres.

Now the limit appears to have come down to the front doorstep.

The worst part of it is that many of these idiot parents roamed free when they were young but now deny their children the same freedom. Meanwhile the inmates - err, I mean children - are dead keen on staying locked up too, every bit as afraid as their paranoid parents, who drive them to school in big, fuck-off SUVs but then worry like big girls' blouses about 'the traffic'. (Which, with confidence and the right guidance, is easily dealt with.)

I honestly think that parents' instincts can be destructive at times: all that fear and distrust can run amok if not reigned in. Indeed, most of the absurd moral panics of recent years have been down to parents panicking about their children, which causes all sorts of problems for the rest of society, made up - as it is - of sensible, grown up adults.

And if you want to sell something, just get the parents to think their child NEEDS it. Hence the rise of annoying mobile phones which are supposed to help little Timmy get in touch, but which usually gets his head kicked in by Big Kev and his trog mates when they get around to mugging him for his new Nokia. And there's the spectre of children being microchipped and traced, 'just in case', even though there's something just weird about using the same means to trace the family dog and your first born.

Psycho-parenting reaches its crescendo during the child's adolescence, when a difficult time is made worse by jealous, confused 'adults' who resent the loss of total control and can no longer project their wills and desires onto someone who is turning into an adult in their own right. As the chav plague shows, there's not enough parenting going on in some houses, but as the high number of unhappy, bitter damaged people on booze or anti-depressants show, there's too many jumped-up little Hitlers and Evas warping their kids too.

Thankfully, some parents are beginning to question this outlook. And since children are being treated like Red Setters, perhaps they should at least be given the same number of walks and exercise. Nature is wonderful, be it fungi, birds, trees or clumps of fox fur, as even I in my garden (and the big holes I liked digging) could attest.

But right now, we're fucked up and we no longer spare our children the worst of our instinctual lunacy. A million miles away from my brother, who roamed and roamed and played with friends in the park, walked to the shop on his own and frankly didn't give a toss - a healthy and somewhat alien attitude these days. He had the choice I did and made the most of it, as did I on my own terms. If only today's children had the choice, and for that matter, the will to do the same. I blame the parents, as the old cliché goes.

Some of you may have heard that racist, stupid Tory MP Ann Winterton is trying to limit abortion through the back door:

Ann Winterton's bill would require women to be counselled about possible ill-effects, then to wait a week to consider them before going ahead...

...She wants compulsory counselling - rather than the voluntary counselling offered currently - and a seven-day "cooling off" period, to allow time for second thoughts.

And her Termination of Pregnancy (Counselling and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill will also include a provision that doctors record whether abortions are being performed on physical or mental grounds.

Yes, because what vulnerable, desperate women need is to be forced into a long wait to ponder what happens next in painful detail, being harrassed by some counseller and then given the scarlet letter on their medical records. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Apparently, this is all for the good of their mental health, which is beyond parody IMHO.

This dreadful misanthrope does not care for women nor for the children who will end up growing up either poor or unwanted. (Or exploited Chinese labourers, for that matter.) It's callous, vindictive and intrusive and all about putting ideology before reality. Hopefully it will be defeated immediately, but this is perhaps the first of many skirmishes over the issue.

As for Winterton, there's nothing particularly pro-life about her, is there? You have to wonder why the Whips didn't shut her up, as this is hardly going to win Dave Cameron that all-important female vote.

Yet again, that smug thug, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who I will now refer to as 'Thingy' as repeatedly typing his surname is a surefire route to RSI) is rattling his sabre. Iran continues to try to get nukes (for civilian purposes, honest guv!), destroy Israel, spread Persian hegemony across the Middle East and generally be a shit. No change there, then, but it's now helmed by someone who looks like a stoned Alan Rickman and who can't be arsed to do up his top shirt button or wear a tie. The scruffy git.

It'll all end in tears. No matter how big and strong you are, it's never good to piss off neighbours who hate you anyway. There are enough Sunni Muslim states and indeed well-armed Israelis willing to bury the hatchet (in the nearest Shia, alas) and stand up to the yobs from Tehran, including Thingy.

Plus, Thingy is making enemies here, there and everywhere. If you really want to be a world power, do you really want to threaten the destruction of Europe and the US? True, everyone in the EU are, as a rule, too shit-scared to stand up to the Islamist ASBO brigade. But that can and will change - it's a fact that worms will eventually turn if you step on them enough.

That's bad news if you're a moderate Muslim and it's you who's getting the rubber glove treatment from overzealous coppers. But there's a certain callousness on the part of radical Islamists towards their 'brothers'. If a few or many get harassed, beaten, lynched or beaten up, then it's a golden opportunity for cheap propaganda. And hey - if they were good before they snuffed it, they'll probably go to heaven, so it doesn't really matter anyway...

(And that's what defines Islamic extremism - a tendency, indeed a need, to find a convenient get-out clause for everything, allowing one to be a total twat and still sleep at night. For if truth be told, the Islamists are more like traditional politicians and media whores than they dare admit. It's all self-serving realpolitik, hot-air rhetoric and weasel-words once you strip away the zeal.)

But perhaps what will do for Iran, other than a hail of Israeli warheads, is its own success. Since 1979, the Iranian population has boomed, with the average age now being around 24.8, and a growth rate of 1.1% in this year alone. [SOURCE] And there's nothing more damaging to a bunch of corrupt, ageing, stuffy old git mullahs and their toadies than a large number of bored, well-educated young people.

Perhaps that's why Thingy uses a potent cocktail of religion and nationalism to drug the masses. But what happens when those ambitions are frustrated?

Thingy and his mates might well be happy to live in a Sharia cage, enforced by bearded bootboys masquerading as a decency police. But for the young of Iran, living in that cage for the rest of their lives must seem a dismal prospect.

And so, it may well be that the Iranian regime will come crashing down once its first true crisis comes along. But whether that will be the passion of youth or a nuclear winter is yet to be decided. For now, it's happy to keep on playing chicken with its enemies, and may yet have to be plucked…

So, violent porn is getting banned in the UK and we'll all now sleep safely in our beds. Hurrah!

Actually not. First of all, a pervert is a pervert, so if we somehow stop his supply of filth, that in itself is not going to stop him carrying out crimes. Vigilance may, though, and so could everyone looking out for everyone else a bit more.

But the thrill we get by symbolically purging ourselves of the latest scapegoat, be it guns, dangerous dogs or tacky Italian video nasties in the 80s, has always vetoed common sense, so there you go. And in that vein, the proposed law makes a sweeping assertion that all violent porn is immoral. True, if it features unwilling parties or encourages genuinely depraved behaviour like child abuse or bestiality, then throw the book at 'em.

But while violent porn involving willing parties isn't your cup of tea, and is certainly not mine, why shouldn't consenting adults watch what other consulting adults do? It's as if the notion that DIRTY PICTURES are a terrible thing in and of themselves, irrespective of whether a person is or isn't being preyed upon in them.

And that's the point: the crack down is just another symptom of the UK's dysfunctional relationship with sex. We're still wrestling with sex education while teen pregnancies and VD infection rates go through the roof. We get into a fix over violent porn, but magazines, media and society splash semi and fully nude images everywhere.

Our hypocrisy in this regard is equal to that of prisons where you get treated like one of the lads if you run over and kill a toddler, but get lynched if you molested him or her first.

And it's ironic too on the one hand that we can no longer look at bondage vids, but the BBC is still happy to show footage of a biker nearly crushing a WPC beneath his wheels. Ah, but you see, that's just violence. No one got an erection or anything...

I saw Good Bye Lenin yesterday and felt driven to write about it. But whereas other reviews have dwelt on the comedy, the 'Ostalgie' for the long-gone DPR of Germany and the sterling performances by the cast, I couldn't help but notice the film's darker undertones. This is at heart a Shakespearean Tragedy and a film about madness and the decay of truth.

After all, the film’s main protagonist, Alex Kerner, perhaps only exceeded by the situation he finds himself in, is the villain of the piece. He manipulates, lies, bullies and deceives non-stop: in effect he becomes like the Stasi officer who socks him in the stomach: trying to win loyalty through menaces, and using his authority to a bad end, or the East German state itself, mollycoddling and oppressive in equal measure. And far from being funny, his scavenging for old junk, self-pitying rants about the changing world he lives in and the outright delusion he creates for himself at the end of the film suggests a very lonely and warped figure, as much in it for himself and his insecurities as to protect his mother, Christiane.

Perhaps he sums it up while arguing with his sister Ariane, condemning her as a cynic - a self-revealing irony from someone who is already too bitter, skewed, obsessive and in denial to accept the world he lives in and his place in it. He has more in common with the griping old folk he conspires with to keep up his mother's fantasy than anyone his own age, including his girlfriend Lara. At another point he attacks his sister for wanting to turn their mother's life support off at once point, but again this just highlights the unliving, unreal living death he condemns her to instead.

Far from being the 'hero', he has become the State he once mocked, up to the point of stopping his sister's family moving out, and so keeping them in a dysfunctional society as surely as the Berlin Wall did. Throughout the film, his focus on his mother eclipses that on his baby niece Paula: as with the old East Germany, the young are marginalised in the name of supporting the old order.

In different circumstances, Alex would have easily done terrible things in the name of Socialism, and what sort of monster might he have become under the Third Reich? As his mother says, Alex is as 'stubborn as a mule', and this trait grows and develops to quite abnormal proportions. Such an implication casts a long shadow over the film: in many ways it's a study of tyranny as much as it is a black comedy.

So is Alex's mother and his sister just as bad? Not really - if anything, they are motivated by a sort of practical need to carry on with life rather than Alex's pathetic attempts to put it into an 'Ostalgic' deep freeze. Mother's lies about how and why her husband left and why she didn't follow, her fervent socialism and her own deception of Alex at the film's conclusion comes from a woman who finds herself in tough times and who tries her best to stay afloat and support her family.

Arianne, Alex's more materialistic sister, is slagged off and bullied by him, yet her own brutal pragmatism, scepticism (quite separate from Alex's cynicism) and self-interest is rooted in part through growing up in a decaying society and in part from having a family of her own - which Mummy's Boy Alex doesn't. Nor is she unprincipled - her love for her mother is what keeps her in Alex's control, and her own understandable anger makes her turn and walk the other way when she finally meets her father. While one is capitalist and the other socialist, Mother and Daughter are alike in the sense that they are the matriarchs of their families and so make the sort of hard choices they feel necessary.

Alex has the luxury of hurling tantrums and glaring menacingly to get his own way, but is incapable of the selfless sacrifices Ariane and Christiane make as they try to keep their broods together, flaws or no flaws. While you might not agree with their views, they both show their maturity through making these hard choices. Whereas Alex, with his increasingly unhealthy obsession with looking after his mother, keeping her in the dark and dwelling on a past that never was seems pathetically infantile. The boy Alex who surprises and delights his mother with a rocket costume at the start of the film seems far more mature, compassionate and sane than the man he comes to be, and that is yet another of the film's biggest tragedies.

What about Alex's Father? Again, like his daughter and ex-wife, he seems to be a person caught up in the tide of events whose choices you might not agree with, but which were made with the best intentions: unlike his son, he tries to move on. On that count, he doesn't deserve being used as little better than another player in Alex's scheme, nor the angry snub he gets from Arianne. (Although, she didn’t quite deserve to lose her father at such a young age either - events beyond their control have split father and daughter irrevocably.)

Likewise, Alex's friend, the hyperactive Wessie wannabe film director, Denis, doesn't seem so bad. While he plays a willing part in Alex's subterfuge, this is out of a sort of cheerful, manic enthusiasm that blinds him to the real nature of what he is doing. In that way, he is as unhinged as his friend, but more through being too keen and immature than too driven and oppressive. Plus, his actions are influenced by Alex's own scheming nature - he exploits his friend's desire to be a film director by yet more manipulation. Again, Alex is exposed as an Eastern Bloc monster that no longer quite fits in.

But if the film only really has two true villains - the malign influence of the DPR and Alex himself - it also has two heroes. The most surprising of these is Rainer, Ariane's West German boyfriend. When we first meet him, he seems to be a materialistic dolt and his own rant about 'Ossies' doesn't endear him much to the audience. Yet as the film develops, we begin to see a man who is devoted to his partner, his stepdaughter and his unborn child and it is this that keeps him involved in Alex's scheme. It is a sad irony that this helps, rather than hinders, Alex's plans as it ensures Rainer's involvement as long as Alex can strong-arm Ariane. Rainer the Wessie ends like many a decent Ossie who had to submit for the sake of his family: a subtle sort of self-sacrifice that Alex is oblivious to. (As an aside, Rainer is played by Alexander Beyer - himself born and raised in the DPR.)

The more obvious hero, of course, is Alex's girlfriend and Nurse, Lara. She goes along with Alex, but makes it clear that there are limits to what he can and can't do: if anything, her own principles stop Alex's total descent into madness, and she is the only character who can successfully stand up to him. Perhaps this is because she actually is willing to put herself on the line - be it on a protest march or interrupting an overly verbose doctor (who, like Alex does with his sister, stares her down into submission). She also puts Alex in his place and, finally, reveals the truth to his mother, even when she doesn't want to hear it. (And presumably telling Christiane to keep Alex in the dark too, suggesting he is now as vulnerable to the truth as his mother was once assumed to be.)

This alone makes her virtuous, but she is heroic too in that she values the truth and loves Alex nonetheless. Or rather, she loves the part of him that is still good, kind and loyal, even as it is increasingly submerged by his worst traits, and through this she never gives up on him, even when everyone else (including the audience) might want to. To sum up, she doesn't submit, either to a non-ideal world, an increasingly unstable situation or the urge to just leave what was once and who could still be a loving, decent man.

But the ultimately tragedy of the film is what may happen after its end. Alex's purpose, and the source of his power, was the care of his ailing mother. With that gone, and another child on the way, it seems unlikely Ariane would tolerate him any longer.

Nor does he seem capable of staying friends with Denis: their project in keeping Christiane deluded was the main bond between them, but the cheerful and enthusiastic Denis doesn't seem to have much in common with the damaged, dysfunctional man his friend becomes, and so their future friendship seems uncertain.

And Alex, having made and wallowed in his own artificial DPR, is hardly equipped mentally to deal either with the new Germany or the remnants of the old. Even his peace of mind depends on a (necessary) lie: without it, he may no longer be able to function.

Again, Lara may prove to be his salvation, but only if he can survive yet another lie falling apart and can heal the wounds he himself has inflicted. But as the film ends as it begun with a misinformed, self-serving narrative from Alex himself, once can't help feeling that these are really the thoughts of an old bitter man, alone and rootless, and left behind by a world he had rejected.

Let me nail my colours to the mast here and say I support a woman's right to choose. Or, since I hate euphemisms, abortion. For those who claim I'm in favour of murder, I'd like to ask if it's any less of an act of murder to have an unwanted, unloved child born into this world? Or for that child to grow up poor because his or her mother got pregnant too young or for that child to be given up after its birth and passed from foster home to foster home, with no roots to speak of? Or is stopping the 'evil' of abortion worth the wretched sight of babies born permanently ravaged by their mothers' drug habits? You may as well dash the child's brains out there and then on the delivery room floor.

Or is it any less an act of murder for women's bodies to have their autonomy taken away by the state? Would you be so 'pro-life' if the precedent thus set lead to you not being able to do with your body in the way you want? If abortion is banned, it could well be a slippery slope. Either way, there would be a roaring trade in coathangers.

That said, I really hate the terms 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life'. It’s the sort of misleading Newspeak so beloved by our cherished New Labour government. 'Pro-Choice’ isn’t in favour of the foetus having a choice. (Not that it could anyway, but you get the point). And 'Pro-Life' doesn't rate the mother's life too highly either. (The implication being that the unborn child is far purer and so far worthier than the murdering slut carrying it is).

If either side had any balls, they'd call their stances 'Pro' or 'Anti' Abortion and be plain and honest about it. But that would yank away the self-righteous bullshit of ideologues trying to preach their epic battle against the forces of evil/Satan/infanticide/patriarchy/rape/incest. (Delete according to taste).

But still, stories like this make my blood boil. I think a later (as in, 20+ weeks) abortion is only right in extreme and/or life threatening circumstances. Having a clubfoot isn't, the last time I checked, a killer. It smacks instead of parents who are so damn vain and demanding, that a child with any flaws just simply won’t do. Heaven forfend that these (often well off) tossers have to put up with looking after a child with Down’s Syndrome, or Spina Bifida or, in one extreme case, is able to hear while their parents are deaf. Gene scanning just commodifies the human condition. It also lets parenthood – already one of the dodgiest and least reliable of professions – run amuck with its petty egotism and small-dicked desire for control. (Cleft palates aren’t an excuse either.)

Far be it for me to be controversial at this point, but at their most extreme, ‘Pro-choice’, ‘Pro-life’ and Nazism all connect at their most extreme points. They all objectify people’s bodies, all get drunk on their own piety and they all make far too narrow judgements on who does and doesn’t get to live. If you don’t want your child because their left leg is slightly wonky, or you’ll force a young girl to give birth to her rapist’s child then you’re marching to the tune of the truly sinister whether you like it or not.

The hard and sharp answer to the abortion debate is that there has to be a balance struck between ‘choice’ and ‘life’. I don’t think there should be laws stopping mothers getting abortions in most cases. But this needs to go hand in hand with the consensus that disability is not a ‘problem’ and that every child born should be valued. Whether or not parents with ‘hard’ lifestyle choices have abortions is one thing, but we should all reserve our right to condemn them for it nonetheless. To sum up, Abortion is too complex an issue to be solved with one simple, pat answer. Not that this will stop anyone.

I watched Oldboy last weekend... And came away much in the same state that I did after watching The Baby Of Macon or Last House On The Left. It's not so much a film as one of those Catholic pilgrimages where you flay yourself and wear sack cloth: a director's pompous desire to punish his audience rather than stimulate it, for some unknown higher purpose.

What starts out as an interesting action film/thriller degenerates into a pretensious slough of improbability, flat and univolving characters, silly histrionics and the sense that director Park Chan-Wook is a depressed nihilist, in the style of Thomas Hardy, who wants everyone else to feel the same way.

I suppose the film's point is the futility of revenge, but that's all very well when the director seems to be wagging a finger in the face of the audience for daring to enjoy the protagonist, Dae-Su, get his own back. You can't help feeling that Park is too defeated and unhappy to face up to his monsters so punishes his character and the audience for engaging theirs. He probably realised, too, that the film was getting to be too enjoyable, so threw away some of the most interesting ideas and concentrated on being bleak, morbid and obscure. The 'twist' was also plain silly and contrived.

It's not half as good as it claims, is a depressing chore to watch and isn't much more than a day out for a director's hobby horse. No wonder the fanboys loved it - pretensious and masochistic crap always impresses the pseuds. It's also vague enough to project your own self-congraulatory readings onto it, but I think that's more down to Park's limitations as a director than any grand plan on his part.

All in all, avoid.

A Heavy Metal band wins Eurovision, and the Grauniad can barely hold back its contempt.

Seriously, though, since when did such a pack of vain, overpriveleged tossers wield such influence anyway? If you're not 'cool', by Grauniad/Islington standards, then you're scorned by everyone else.

If you don't believe me, look at the charts, the music mags, TV, the radio. They all echo the Grauniad line, whether it's a taste for cheezy crap pop, inane indy or a patronising 'pat-the-ghetto-on-the-head' love of Hip Hop. While we claim to be a 'classless' society, it's class as in good taste and self-determination that's been lost.

We still all secretly yearn to be told how to think, what to wear and what to buy by whom we consider our social betters. This consensus dates back to the time when British music stopped selling abroad and started becoming an onanistic chat between guffawing twats in moptop haircuts who all go to Oxbridge and then put on Mockney accents to get on television.

And like all elites, the Islington Twats can't bear to be challenged. Lordi's win and the 12 points the UK gave this band got the Guardianistas puking - how dare those kitsch peasants in their semi-detached houses and second hand cars vote for this squareness? The Grauniad can't bear to take criticism on its blogs from readers - that's usually a sign that they can't see others as anything other than subordinates. The Guardian's centre-left politics lets you enjoy feudalism's benefits with a dash of guilt in lieu of absolution, just like how the Catholic Church used to let off all those depraved French aristocrats.

But here's a radical idea. Just love the music you really like. Fuck the NME, fuck Alex Petridis, fuck those twats who think you're a joke 'cos you don't frog march to their Horst Wessel theme of listening to what you're supposed to and not what you like. Listen to Heavy Metal! Jazz! Bolivian pan pipes! Elevator music! Bird song! Tatu!!!

Or as Lordi put it, "Would You Love A Monsterman?" If so, you can love your record collection too.