Itwaseverthus' Weblog

Trousseau

itwaseverthus — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:20:23 +0000

One house in fashionable North London – significant majority owned by Barclays Bank

Extensive collection of fashionable underwear ranging from sizes “s” in the more historic designs to “M” in current.

Collection of gym gear and memberships with halfhearted view to reversal of above trend

Extensive collection of dull porn (the triumph of hope over experience)

3 “no-ones ever going to love you like I do”

3 validations of the proposal to date

Ragtag collection of friends of varying oddity

Set of unused garden implements

Many unknown lads unlikely to turn at midnight with a cry

Soppy introspective poetry books

Pretty pictures

Large bed

Situations vacant.

If you must fly budget

itwaseverthus — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:23:52 +0000

If such a pact were possible then one believes a pact between one, society and one’s unborn children would all agree that it is for the best they remain unborn.

It is in this fashion we accept that we will be the terminal station for a million years genetic history and while I am not suggesting there should be a ticker tape procession I believe it would generally be agreed to be a good thing.

Kitty says.

These thoughts on our mortal genes terminal point were not inspired by any imminent terminal event – though I am convinced there is a great cancer blog in me (eating its way out?) – but rather the experience of children on an EasyJet flight. Its not so much the children per se as the effect they had on the attending adults. The closest were an extended Italian family – which is adorable in a taverna in Naples but positively, numbingly, violence inducing when you have seats that do not recline and a couple, granny and a bambino which they simply cannot stop pandering too. It did not help that they had packed for an occupation rather than a holiday, such that every action of the child required an urgent intervention in numerous bags in the overhead locker.

Still, I sustain an industry that keeps ear plugs in ears (I mean, I hope that’s what they are for) and if they cannot be silenced then they shall at least be muffled. We sit then in our non reclining seat in relative peace until the lady beside me proves an irresistible lure to her children and worse of all her husband. It was, apparently, a major grievance that they did not have seats together on the basis they were a “family”. There is a solution people – pay for the privilege.

Why do people with children possess a sense of entitlement beyond reason and premised on what appears to be an assumption that they are raising the first offspring of the species – I mean, if they were, then they were baton charge ugly and worst of all the husband, as he leaned over me to discuss whether they should buy some in flight electrical crap (oh there’s another blog in that) was somewhat fragrant. Now who doesn’t enjoy having their faces stuck in a mans crotch but not when they are of the type that seems to think an early morning airport run is the get-out-of-jail for the daily shower. The sainted wife managed, in the lowered, pained tones, of the mother of one large and several small kids to talk him out of it and away from us and to the relief of our respective solitudes.

If you will excuse me I am off to shout at some bus queue people.

Iris’ blues

itwaseverthus — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:00:14 +0000

Empathy

A noble aspiration but occasionally hard felt.

It is thus on hearing the news that the nasty flower of Norn Ireland, Iris Robinson, is to retire due to illness and ongoing depression.

The nasty inner child smiled at the pronouncement of a DUP colleague that the resignation had “come out of the blue” which was, I am sure, an unintended poetry.

The weathered inner cynic wondered if it was related to her little expenses embarrassment over the summer which, while not entirely of the duck house variety, earned her family the label “Swish Family Robinson”.

The really quite bitchy inner queen wondered if the bible might be a little hard on her over being depressed – I’m sure Jesus wants her for a sunbeam rather than a moody old cow. The services of her Christian psychiatrist friend, offered earlier in the year to help turn homosexuals heterosexual, might have been better utilised with some pharmaceutical dispensing given the innateness of the gay bit versus the chemical adjustment required of the blues bit.

It would certainly offer him better job satisfaction if customer cure is his ambition.

Empathy – a learned socialisation skill which increases over time through life experience. The awareness of and sympathy to the plight or experience of another. The realisation that what we have in common is less than that which divides us and that, maybe, we all need a hand to hold, whether it be to help us through the blues or maybe just the night.

Look – one doesn’t do “hello rainbow, hello cloud” very well but one can sympathise with the woman, admittedly, with the memory of her past utterances, through gritted teeth.

You would just wish that sometimes those who have a bit of crap in their lives might have a little awareness towards those who get the crap kicked out of them for no other reason than the fact of whom they share their beds and their lives with.

Would you Adam and Eve it?

itwaseverthus — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:41:31 +0000

In relation to the investigation into the handling of abuse cases by the Archdiocese of Dublin, why is the Taoiseach and Irish Government defending the Vatican and the Papal Nuncio around the diplomatic niceties of ignoring/not cooperating and attempting to offshore (instructions being issued in Latin no less) the requests for and provision of documentation and information concerning the systemic attempt to hide the problem at the expense of the then and future victims.

We are not talking about Trafigura or BP here. These are the self appointed moral guardians of their membership. Let justice be done though the heavens fall and all that (or fiat justitia ruat caelum as Pope Benny might say over sherries with the girls). Where is the sense of simple right and wrong that makes a mockery of mental reservation and all that angels on pinheads nonsense that Cardinal Connell spouts.

I’m mentally reserving what I really think of him.

In other news I see the Fianna Fail (majority party in Irish govt) parliamentary party are meeting to discuss the flawed legislation that would allow Civil Partnerships.

They are, alas, seeking to flaw it some more and according to the leader of the Green party they are looking for a “freedom of conscience amendment to be stitched in to the legislation to give people a religious ‘opt-out’ in providing everyday goods and services to gay couples”.

I am, no really, too cynical to be generally outraged as this type of behaviour generally confirms my low opinion of Irish politicians and senior church people but really, in this climate, with all the crap going on, and the rain, and the economy in tatters, can nobody see the need for a little progress up rather than down the hill.

I bore myself as I write this but can no intellectual colossus in Fianna Fail (sic) not try out the old equality test of delete “gay” and insert “black”, “jew”, “woman” and see if you feel as comfortable about your freedom of conscience on religious grounds.

But, being gay is, after all, solely concerned about where you put your cock and of course cock management and usage and guidance thereon is something we clearly, clearly need to take “religious grounds” instruction on.

“Freedom of conscience” – oh fuck off.

Mental Reservation

itwaseverthus — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:41:00 +0000

One of the most important discoveries a man will make in his life is to discover his willy.

This generally happens when he is a child unless he is particularly short sighted or under endowed and, frankly, if you are the latter would you want glasses?

This love affair will mature with maturity and continue until death or diabetes.

With the gay man he will share and extend this love and, indeed, will tend to overshare in some circumstances.

Kitty says.

For it is written in the bible that wherever three or more gay men shall sitteth at the tableith then verily the conversation shall turn at some point to willies. (its at the back just before the index and acknowledgments).

It is not, however, only gay men however who are willie centric. Our friends in the Vatican (oh hallo girls) have a deep and abiding interest in the willy, its use or more particularly the timing of its usage and the locale of the usage.

In an ascending order of acceptable usage we have

Ooh that feels good

In your wife to make babies
In your wife for the hell of it but always possible there might be babies
In the general vicinity of your wife

Ooooh you are naughty

In your wife with no question of babies
Up your wife’s bum
In any woman who is not your wife
Up anyone’s bum
Up your boyfriends bum if you are married to him
Up your boyfriends bum
Anywhere in the vicinity of your boyfriend
Up the bum of that guy who’s a troll you met in a bar when you were hammered and it’s a bit of a morning mercy shag but what the hell.

So as you can see the Vatican girls have a lot to say about willies.

Except when they are attached to priests and up children.

Neither the Vatican, nor the Irish Papal nuncio responded to the Irish Commission of Investigation in to the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin’s request for documentation on abuse cases concerning children.

At a press conference to discuss the Commissions finding the current Archbishop of Dublin “regretted” that the request were not answered.

So many “regrets” for more “hurt” heaped upon the victims.

Not perhaps as hurtful as being a child with a Priest’s willy inside you but distressing none the less.

The former Archbishop of the Dublin diocese, Desmond Connell, now Cardinal, was however terribly helpful in explaining the concept of “mental reservation” which is essentially a form of language who’s ambiguity you are aware may lead to an untrue belief but means you have not told a lie (in my trade we call it “legal drafting”).

The Commission helpfully provided an example:

“John calls to the parish priest to make a complaint about the behaviour of one of his curates. The parish priest sees him coming but does not want to see him because he considers John to be a troublemaker. He sends another of his curates to answer the door. John asks the curate if the parish priest is in. The curate replies that he is not.”

The Commission added: “This is clearly untrue but in the Church’s view it is not a lie because, when the curate told John that the parish priest was not in, he mentally reserved the words ‘…to you’.”

John of course might have been calling to complain about the curate who was fucking his eight year old but that makes him no less a troublemaker.

Cardinal Connell used mental reservation to explain away his ex facie denial that Church funds had been used to settle civil cases taken by sex abuse victims. He had told journalists “that diocesan funds ARE [ report's emphasis] not used for such a purpose; that he had not said that diocesan funds WERE not used for such a purpose. By using the present tense he had not excluded the possibility that diocesan funds had been used for such purpose in the past.”

He expanded upon this to say “you may be put in a position where you have to answer, and there may be circumstances in which you can use an ambiguous expression realising that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be – permitting that to happen, not willing that it happened, that would be lying . . . So mental reservation is, in a sense, a way of answering without lying.”

So, in applying mental reservation we have not told a lie, we have merely allowed someone to believe an untrue version.

No harm done then Cardinal. Sleep well on the knowledge that your Church is now mentally as well as physically fucking its adherents.

Who God? me god?

itwaseverthus — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:02:09 +0000

With the current bogey man being the mad mullah peddling Islam as a religion of hate (and while it has its mad moments like all the major religions its core message is fundamentally (boom boom) peaceful) it is fashionable to lump all religion as being inherently not. a. good. thing.

The premise perhaps that if we only learned to live in peace and harmony and not impose these beliefs from on sky, or from monkey god, then a better and fairer world would prevail. Like North Korea perhaps.

The opposing view of our mullah or papal friend is that if only you live according to their code then a better and fairer world would prevail. Like Afghanistan under the Taliban perhaps.

There are, like financial products, few inherently bad religions – there are only bad salespeople.

As competitive creatures, human beings are a few evolutionary steps up the hierarchy from tearing each other to pieces on a constant rather than the current intermittent basis. The rule of law is what keeps the cars on the right side of the road and the majority of axe wielding maniacs from your door. There is too an inherent morality which, like all morality, is a social construct but reflective too of an instinctive grasping for meaning born of our consciousness that we will die. For many people it is not enough to have a hand to hold in the night but to have the hope that there might be a hand to guide through the darkness of the solitary journey that comes to us all.

The problem arises from the layering upon layering that organised religion heaps on the simplest tenet of morality – I should not kill my fellow man because to extinguish him is to put him in the darkness today that I might know tomorrow.

So we escalate on each side of the debate in increasingly shrill voices- one side frantically splitting particles within particles to show there is no organised plan, the other seeing in the particle the smallest fragment of their monkey god. What our Dawkinite friends should consider more however is that while religion admittedly inspires the hatchet wielding mob it more usually keeps them off the street. It is not religion per se that is wrong – its fact and existence unified with or divorced from a belief in the underpinning tenets is, through its acknowledgment of consciousness, a key element of what separates us from our unconscious fellow creatures.

”Far more mysterious that the call of sex to sex is the tenderness that we throw into that call: far wider the gulf between us and the farmyard than that between the farmyard and the garbage that nourishes it. We are evolving, in ways that Science cannot measure, to ends that Theology dare not contemplate”

Meet your new government Part I

itwaseverthus — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:36:03 +0000

“If I’ve got a nanny, I’ve got a nanny. And if anybody doesn’t like it – tough”.

“I do wish you wouldn’t keep going on about my nanny. if I had a valet you’d think it was perfectly normal”.

Jacob Rees-Mogg speaking to the Mail on Sunday. He is talking about his nanny. His nanny. No, not his children’s nanny. His nanny. His.

His.

Trevor is 40 and is the tory candidate for North East Somerset.

Heaven Knocking

itwaseverthus — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:14:20 +0000

This Virgin Mary visiting Knock (In November? – I mean Fatima would still have a bit of the weather but hey ho what’s with the celestial beings) business continues and we now have not one but two – read ‘em – two visionaries speaking with her at rather precise times, namely 3pm last Sunday.

Her next scheduled appearance is on the 5th December – time to be agreed with her people – and in the meantime she is appearing on a gable wall in the Dominican Republic.

The Irish Times spoke with the “visionaries” (and they repeatedly use the inverted commas like kitchen tongs) and, for a lady who would have spoken Aramaic, she had a remarkably good grasp of English and passed on several messages.

Visionary one reported – “people were pulling out of me, tipping off me, throwing their children at me and all they wanted to do was touch me so I could heal them” (really, he is living my life) as she stated “I love all my children with my immaculate heart”. I can only imagine that baby Jesus was hoppin’ when she got home on the basis that he is the Immaculate Heart, she the Immaculate Conception. Still, its easy to get muddled in a crowd as she continued to say “I am the immaculate heart, Mother of all my children, Mother of all God’s children. I am the Immaculate Conception. I am Queen of the heavens. I am Queen of the Earth”

Disappointing that in an Irish crowd there was no-one to mention that Mrs Joseph Carpenter was getting a bit ahead of herself on the titles front.

Finally all this endless visioning and interceding and being variously disappointed and smiling at “her people” has lead to her being a bit sketchy on current affairs – “I love all my children unconditionally with my immaculate heart, especially all my priests who are not listening to my call. I ask all my children to pray for my priests. Pray. Pray. Pray.”

I ask all my children to run away from Priests, run children run run run…..

Starter for 10

itwaseverthus — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:20:06 +0000

Nina from Castlebar had a religious experience at the weekend:

“The sun was spinning in the sky. I experienced a feeling of total happiness. It is a feeling I would love to experience again. It was amazing. I felt marvellous.”

Was Nina

(a) at the Shrine to the Virgin Mary at Knock, County Mayo where the BVM was due to reappear at the weekend?

(b)staggering out of a club at Vauxhall at 8 in the morning having taken sweeties from a nice boy in a tanktop?

Dorian Gray – roadkill

itwaseverthus — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:02:52 +0000

Take one chillingly excellent book. Find a chillingly handsome young man who can combine naivety with decadent corruption in a hair flick. Engage a strong supporting actor.

So far so good.

This being a UK production, however, you have now spent all the money on the top tier actors.

What to do?

Well, lets work up the book – after all its is surely a truism that perfection can be improved on.

Hire some hopelessly wooden love interests and assume the charisma of the lead will hide the awfulness of the support. Round up a bunch of second rate British actresses so the audience can spend the duration wondering if Lady whosit is that whatsit bird from “Heartbeat”.

Create scenes of decadence and lust but suitable to maintain a “15″ certificate.

Tone down the homoerotic element and have chillingly handsome young man make out with a bloke but in a strictly “I’m so decadent, let’s have a go” way. Maintain love interest in an underdeveloped subplot about how love nearly saves the day.

And finally introduce some pointless flashbacks to an abusive childhood to exculpate the wrong ‘un.

In thus fashion did the creators of the truly execrable film “Dorian Gray” manage to mangle the adaptation of Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”.

One of the must chilling aspects of the book was the passivity of Dorian’s portrait. It did not communicate its corruption beyond the changes on the portrait itself nor was Dorian’s Faustian pact explicitly expanded upon. The inevitability of the corruption and the inability to resist or reverse it are at the heart of the novel. Suffice to say the movie makers could not leave this aspect alone. Short of doing the can-can round the garret room, the portrait could not have been more stripped of malevolence and made into a cheap horror flick pastiche.

And to think I brought a second date to this. The shame. Bad enough this movie took two hours of my life without condemning me to my dotage alone in the gin soaked wing backed armchair, the cats in the ever decreasing predatory circle.