Find and kill and find and SMASH

So, given to bouts of anxiety as I am, I thought I'd drag my tensed-up carcass to a meditation class tonight. Since I came across the leaflet last week, advertising the start of the course with plenty of time, in the chip shop I rarely visit - I figured it was ser-en-dip-it-tuss and that. Only as it transpired, fate did not want me to attend after all. For fate intervened in the form of a football, erratically kicked by a small boy, straight through my flimsy lounge window.

The dog had been peacefully snoozing on the chair and barrelled into the hall with the end of his tail so far between his legs it almost outran his head. Judging by the unholiness of the atmosphere in the room now, I can only conclude he had a small accident along the way. (Oh it's in the spaces between the old wooden slats I shall have to move immediately.) The noise was like someone dropping a crate of empty wine bottles down a short flight of stairs, SMASH bump SMASHASH tinkle tinkle tinkle. The image was so fixed in my mind that as I ran down the Corridor to see, I was actually thinking "Did I leave a large collection of empty wine bottles somewhere?" Ah, l'idee fixe or whatever.

So, yeah, glass everyfuckingwhere ranging from flakes resembling proper posh sea salt sprinkled on the sofa to big ugly semi-rectangular guillotines scattered all the way across the floor and propped on the radiator. It's just as well I hadn't settled in to watch The Simpsons on the sofa with my left cheek about six inches from the window. Brrr. I am genuinely interested to see how my skin ages, thank you.

A nice man who was passing stopped to say he'd seen a boy run next door. The child of my nice neighbour. Turns out the little bugger just sat down to tea and not a word said not a peep the little swine. Within half an hour (after phoning for a proper cockney, who came round all bald and took out the giant daggers of glass from the frame with his bare hands) she'd marched him round to apologise. Apparently it hadn't really sunk in until Nice Neighbour explained to him that the lovely Beast could have got glass in his paws. It was all sort of charming, really, in spite of the ruined evening and the meticulous sweeping and traumatised dog and all. Quite sort of 1950s. High jinks. Boys playing in the street and scurrying away when they break windows. A quaint domestic mishap. Beats violent burglary.

It was all very 21st C. on Friday, though, as it was my birthday and there was polite end-of-evening naughty debauchery at 3am. All a very welcome surprise. Previous to that there was a long and pleasant evening on some leathery sofas and fighting over jukebox and the like. I don't know why I'm so surprised when an evening goes well and everyone is happy and all is full of love (and substances), but it keeps it fresh, I suppose.

I had lots of things to write about on here (I will not use that cursed new verb!) but of course not being a proper blogger, I haven't. They included

- Something unforgivably glib and superfluous (probably) about the Virginia Tech massacre and America's bone-deep gun culture. Guns do seem to foster this forgetfulness, absent-mindedness or sense of unreality, about human life - because it must be so easy to just shoot someone. It takes very little physical energy and you can do it from a distance. It must be not quite like actual killing. There's no point even discussing gun control because that's not going to be the issue, the gun lobby's too powerful and guns are right up there with free speech in the US in any case, and people will still say that if he really wanted to he would have set bombs to kill just as many people, etc, etc.

You just have to hope that if something has to give, it's neither the race issue, nor the mental health one. Ostracising anyone for any reason is only going to lead to more of the same, and sectioning anyone who writes bad plays isn't going to help either and is just going to pile misery upon misery and ignorance upon ignorance upon fear upon bullshit - but then, this is always going to happen, especially in America, and so... given the options, they should probably do nothing but brief their police better, and encourage people to be a bit nicer to the weird kids. Perhaps have actual background checks for gun purchasers, rather than making it easier than getting a credit card. Try that. That wouldn't infringe on anyone's God-given right to own an instrument of death, would it?

His last eBay purchase was 37 rubber duckies. It's not funny, not sad, just... nothingy. Which is sad, I suppose.

- Something about the BRMC gig. But then I still have to write up that other stuff on them if I'm going to bother, and so I should incorporate it in there or something. I smoked a cigarette. It seemed only right and natural. I did enjoy it. Maybe I could start smoking and then quit on July 1st when the ban comes in, and do a crappy psuedo-journalistic programme about my nicotiney adventure for BBC Three. It'd be less dangerous than those awful rampantly unethical things where women try to get to size zero by eating their own earwax for a fortnight.

Anyway, they were just as they always were and I was quite beside myself.

- Something about this Cutting Edge doc (don't read that, it's shit, and they can't spell 'eke' and should be fired) about foxes in Stoke Newington, just like me old mucker done did. (He done the VT thing as well. Oh he is better than me. Tsk.) Some sentimental old middle-clarse fools put food out for the foxies and gave them unimaginative names. Still, at least they put chicken livers out, and not Swiss rolls like some asshats did. Some younger and louder middle-clarse fools kept chickens in a coop made of string and fairy leg hairs in their vast Islington-lite back garden, and were infuriated when foxes kept getting in and killing their birds. This was fucking up their shit, and apparently the shit of the world at large, because as they constantly said, they were "trying to be green". How awful - think of the acceleration in the melting of the ice caps every time Foxy crunched down on a chicken neck. The family were all haughty grumpy exasperated about all the sentimental idiots in the area putting food out for them and treating them like ickle flufflies, but even more pissed at the foxes themselves.

The thing is, as was explained to the family, it ain't no good snuffing the pests because as long as the food supply remains, others will come. Others will come. It's like Field of Dreams, except with a rubbish chicken coop instead of a nice baseball park. Regardless! the man of the house hired a fucking marksman to come and shoot the beasts. They had to lure them by leaving meat out in the garden for several nights. A pregnant vixen was dropped first - they really did drop, then stretch a bit, it was horrible, but you can't deny it was quick - then her mate, who'd heard the shot, and screamed, and came to find her. Eerie little bastards, they are. No wonder people anthropomorphosise them. They do people stuff. (Elephants have 'funerals', you know. But anyway.)

So that was that. Except for the fact that it wasn't because as had been patiently explained to them, others came. It was a beautiful illustration of hypocrisy; knowing that shooting the foxes was futile, they went ahead anyway, which makes it an act of revenge, which means they were attributing human qualities and drives and motives to animals... which makes them every bit as noxiously sentimental as the dickheads they derided who think foxes really like cake.

Actually, it was hardly about foxes at all. It was about how awful and poisonous that fat hostile self-righteous posturing and thoroughly ignorant streak of the middle-clarse is. I love Stoke Newington - oh the pretty restaurants and sexy houses and the wondrous cemetery that's in the new Amy Winehouse vid - but it may be some kind of Bermuda Triangle for human decency. It may!

Other than that, I am reading A Round-Heeled Woman. It is not very good. Sorry. It's not. Shame because she is great and it's a good story. It's a month till The Book is out. Erk. I am listening to LCD Soundsystem (yes but I can't be arsed to find a link, it's true). It is very good. I saw John Carpenter's The Thing at the weekend. It was excellent. I am tricking myself into writing something. It will either be brilliant or shit. That's how it goes.

Oh, and this is the best headline... ever. They must have had some kind of moment of perfect shiny enlightenment and inner peace as soon as they thought of it, before screaming and running through Wapping naked. Even if they weren't in Wapping.

Paedo's out (I have been waiting all my life for a pun such as this)

Whoops. I just got a bit carried away with the labels. I have so many as to render them quite useless. Still, an inability to file is a sign of a creative mind. It is.

I did write a thing about the present prisony fiasco with regards that big old paedo, but I don't want to immediately alienate everyone, even if I'm going to alienate some by not writing about it. I might just find someone I agree with and link to them. Oh bugger it, I'll fillet some bits out.

1) Actually it's not actually illegal to just be a paedophile because it's not illegal to fancy children, only to act upon it, which makes you a paedophile who is a sex offender. I wish the media would stop being so lazy on that point. Actually. It's important.

2) Mumble mumble are people who watch nasty child pron actually dangerous in the most literal sense so if we're talking about only the most dangerous criminals that bloke doesn't necessarily qualify does he mumble murfle I think I left a thing over there and have to go now.

3) If they're worried about what nasty crime will be committed next necessitating the lock-up of people for whom there is no room at the inn, I would bet dosh that it's going to be some manner of severe damage to said blokey, who was clever enough to go on all the telly with his face and say that the judge was just doing his job. Get the police guard off Jade's house post haste, they're lining up with leftover fireworks. (I can't watch BB anymore although I suppose I'll watch Shilpa win tomorrow. It's all too ghastly. Whatever those unpleasant women did, their lives are now going to be ruined, and it's rather disproportionate considering they weren't being any more idiotic than most of the idiots you find who aren't on telly.)

Much as I can barely bear the Indie at the moment (it won't stop until we are all hanging our heads in shame so hard we get whiplash), I had to make a knowing face and say 'uh huh' at its front page today. Scroll down for list of people who've been banged up recently, including the naked rambler and people who've refused to pay taxes or fines for political reasons.

Oh and I was also interested to read this, or attempt to read it. I got through a paragraph and a half and then my entire head started to spontaneously warm and sweat reservoired in my ears. For the love of all that is holy, what is that woman taking? I mean, I thought my prose was a bit florid and hectic and such, but compared to her I am Emily goddam Dickinson.

Nu happy woo!

Yes oh yes. Happily I had the original wizard jolly time at Rachel's, came home all skippy mid-morning on the 1st to find the dog (who does not usually get left all night by any means, I hasten to add) had done a cat-like guilt trip by removing a banana skin and teabag from the bin and putting them in the hall to indicate his hysterical desperation for food. Sorry K. Also happily I strolled like a jammy bugger right past the hangover. Unhappily I was then suddenly strucken with some evil winter lurg on the evening of the 2nd, ensuring that my long-anticipated viewing of the 'This Life' special was punctuated by stumbled dashes to the loo down The Corridor. (The Corridor is the defining feature of my flat, which was built by a philanthropist in the 30s like most flats in Walthamstow, and it is so very long that it's not nice when you're ill.)

'This Life +10' was so fist-chewingly insultingly bad that I might have had cause to go a-vomming regardless. I bloody love the original series, it's up there with 'Six Feet Under' for me in terms of wit and nuance and emotional Truth, and of course Anna was a formative influence etc etc no but really, it was great. So it was grotesque to see these sort of reanimated character corpses mouthing lines they would never actually say, in this nasty smug artificial clunky set-up, and although it hasn't ruined it for me I rather wish I'd avoided it. It was such a Comment, or it thought it was - a fly-on-the-wall documentary within a film, and all the look-now-it's-the-noughties-people-have-iPods stuff - and I hate that.

So two fingers to Amy Jenkins even if it was her concoction in the first place and we should be grudgingly grateful. But more importantly a whole set of offensive digits to whatever this malaise is. It's not dissimilar to the bout of whatever it was I had a year ago, which may or may not have been food poisoning. This was too late both for the new year oysters (how did the affluent and properous ever get into those as a stylish sexy thing? They are so messy you need a whole council cleaning squad on standby pointing their high-power hoses at your top) and the subsequent prawns, so it's obviously just the continued wrath of the God in whom I don't believe. This one's evidently pissed off that not everyone thinks He exists, although any decent God wouldn't give a rat's ass because He would have the confidence in Himself, innit. But as Woody Allen once quoth, "How can there be a God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"

Food is once again my enemy, and me and food usually get on pretty well. Constant nausea, wobbly head, old-lady gait. Bugger. And of course the world hasn't realised that the law is, there shall be no bad news for the whole of January. Most of the bad news, as usual, seems to be stupid news. Naturally my gears are especially ground by the re-emergence of the tabloid anti-darling, the Devil Dog. The mauling to death of a small girl is unquestionably horrific and tragic, just as the mauling to death of a small baby was last year, but they seem to be events that just suck the common sense out of the press and police and public alike, spit it out and run around making Eddie Izzard noises. ("Hello, can I come in? I've got a pig in me trousers. Can my friend come in too? He's got jam for brains.")

I have far too much ire on various angles of this for my poor head to deal with at present, but by way of pretending I'm not sickly let's have a nice LIST (with nowhere near sufficient links but, well, I'm new at this really, and I'm ILL, etc):

1) Did I tumble in surprise from my chair when it was reported that they'd seized £15,000 of cash and (at least according to The Sun) some quantity of heroin and coke from the house where the kid died, the stuff belonging to the dog's owner and kid's uncle 23-year-old Kiel Simpson, a tracksuited skinhead with a stupid face? Niet! I must report that in fact my arse stayed exactly where it was m and barely registered a twitch at this unexpected twist. I was Jack's entire family's complete lack of surprise and that of all his dodgy, responsibility-bypass, tracksuited, scally bastard neighbours.

If she'd accidentally swallowed a load of chinawhite and died that way, the press would at least have rounded unequivocally on the feckless little bastard, but because the dog was the deus ex jobby in this case, they somehow can't bring themselves to really point and shout at the crim scum whose fault the situation was entirely. Well, a couple of people have a bit, but one of them was Simon Heffer, and who listens to that old gasbag? It is not a dog issue, besides the fact that the dog was illegal (under a rather moronic and arbitrary law which doesn't work). It is a crim scum issue.

1b) As for ascribing human moral values to dogs, that's just the other side of the noxious sentimentality that propels people to feed their pets ice cream cones. Totally consistent. It's not just the tabs that do it either - so many people, who should know better, automatically think of dogs as knowing what they're doing in the way we do, having motives in the way we do. They do not. I don't get angry at that sort of idiocy because it gives dogs a bad name - dogs don't care - but because the bad name gets dogs and people killed.

Dogs do not have responsibility. Nothing is their fault. They are done to, acted upon, and everything else is instinct. They don't have morals. If loud fireworks bang make jump, as has been suggested was the case here, maybe go bite. If squeal heard, more bite until no more squeal. That's how they work. High-pitched sounds stimulate dogs to bite. It's nothing to do with any desire to kill people. That's why they love squeaky toys - they mimic the distressed cries of prey animals. K's squeaking of his squeaky is fantastically funny and awfully cute, but it still often occurs to me precisely why he enjoys it.

This dog was a year old. It was a puppy. And already fucked up enough to attack, kept outside and isolated, and given the opportunity to act on its most dangerous instincts by fools. (It's now emerged that the family were discussing getting rid of the dog after it bit one of them a few days before - can't find the link but I'll add it later.)

2) It's amazing how little the media seemed to be arsed to find out about the (actually not very long or taxing) Dangerous Dogs Act. They were content to say that only pure-bred pit bulls were banned, when in fact it clearly says 'pit bull type dogs', which covers a multitude of cross-bred, brick-headed, long-legged, muscle-bound penis-extension canine sins. The morons on the internet were calling for pit bulls to be banned when they already are, you morons, but they're the morons on the internet.

What worries me is that the media are starting to figure there's almost no point in getting the facts completely straight about such an emotive issue, because, well, it's a bit pedantic when children are dying and morons are baying for blood. Oh, and also, faced with the choice of a thousand dog experts champing at the bit to go on telly and explain that it's a more complex issue than it appears and it's not as simple as 'pit bulls bad', or of any number of traumatised victims of dog attacks, who do all the outlets pick? Even the BBC take the juicy option and parade the poor sods on the show. Does anyone do sensible news any more? And what's this thing of handing influence over to people who are (totally understandably) hysterical and usually know nothing about the broader issue? They are not in any position to influence opinion, and they don't even realise the media are exploiting them in their pain. If anyone starts talking about 'Ellie's Law' then I am off.

3) What was 3)? Oh yes. The raids. Well, great, they're busting a dog-fighting ring - needed doing. Except that to begin with, they should have done it a long time ago, and for the sake of the dogs, not because of some binary connection with an attack on a person. This means the dogs are now being treated as dangerous objects to be removed from society, rather than the subjects of abuse that they are.

But more importantly, like the DDA itself, the raids aren't going to make any children any safer whatsoever. This is for a very simple reason that I haven't seen anyone else bring up yet, either because they don't know or because it'd be too unpopular and iffy a point to make. If you're a big old crim and you breed dogs for fighting, then you probably know what you're doing as much as a big old crim with a crack lab. The dogs are used in a sport (legality aside) and in gambling and so they are an investment, just like greyhounds. Of course many of them are mistreated, but the serious people are going to spend money and time building and maintaining athletes - champions. (The ones seized from Merseyside so far were from a couple of lock-ups, both at buildings owned by a local bloke who also owns a gym. Yeah? Minted crim scum.) People have to handle the dogs, take them to and from fights. So they don't want the dogs to be people-aggressive, only dog-aggressive. Dog aggression and people aggression in dogs are not the same thing - there's an overlap, yes, but one does not indicate the presence or even propensity of the other. Any dog-aggressive dog should be watched around people, but, well, it's just not a direct equation at all.

So, pit dogs are bred and trained (as far as you can stretch the definition) to want to fight other dogs. If they show signs of wanting to fight people, they are no good. In that context, they are Bad Dogs. They're frowned upon. They're no more suitable as champion fighters than a greyhound with a gammy leg. What worries me is that these are maybe the dogs that the serious dog-fighters offload onto molluscs like Simpson. Although of course his dog Reuben was only a year old, so Simpson probably bought him as a too-small puppy for £400 from one of his dodgy crim mates. Or a bloke at the side of a road. Whatever.

The point is, the likelihood of these lock-up raids bringing in any actual potential child-killing dogs is pretty negligible. (Obviously any dog larger than a baby is a potential child-killer, a point that I wish more people were making till blue in face and cliche-sick, but statistically... it's just not likely.) They need to worry about individual dogs, pit bull or otherwise, owned by individual idiots. Same as before. Same as in 1991 when the DDA was hurried through the House like an illicit lover out of a window. That's not going to change, but as is usual with difficult problems the solution is too tricksy and long-term to be seriously contemplated by a government that wants to stay popular. The public want results, and now they're getting them, even though they're the results of something else entirely.

An amnesty isn't going to help either - all it'll do is shut a few people up until the next attack (I'm betting it'll be, ooh, maybe a Neapolitan mastiff, to shake things up a bit). In the meantime, slightly more well-meaning but still moronic morons are beseiging animal shelters and such with desperate enquiries about their perfectly docile, amiable bull breed slobberer that they now believe is a ticking time bomb, while others are just abandoning them in a panic. (This happened with Rottweilers last year too, only it wasn't reported. The media's angle this time is slightly, fascinatingly different - all because of the legal issue with the dogs, which gives a certain sense of calm and your-government-is-in-control to it. There's room for a mote of sympathetic stuff about the dogs and responsible-ish owners. With the Rotts, it was just scary anarchy time, and the abandonment issue just wasn't relevant somehow. Hmm.)

Oh, and others are having themselves what would appear to be slight little overreactions. The rotten bastards.

The ignorance! I can hardly stand it. (Ha! And now Posh is setting a great example. Sigh.)

Speaking of which, I'm afraid I'm hopelessly hooked on Celebrity Big Brother this time. I know, I know, but it's so succulent for the amateur psychologist. But crucially, it is full of what seem to be genuinely nice people. I really, really like nice people.

I think celebrities in general get a fucking hard time, and of course some of them deserve it because they're horrid or stupid people who were always going to be horrid or stupid one way or another. In Big Brother terms, though, the celebrities are always going to be better value than the nobodies. This is partly because they are used to being watched and analysed, which makes it less of a morally-suspect exercise, and partly because many celebrities become famous due to their natural charisma, personality and yes, intelligence, or the effects thereof.

And, and, if people deal with the pressure of fame for years on end, they either become partially destroyed by it or they achieve this sort of aura of placid contentment and Knowledge. They know themselves. They might not have anything left to prove. That's certainly the defining mark of most of the lot this time. They are lovely. The disgraced former Miss Great Britain and sort-of WAG is an irritating little empty-headed twit, and the two ex-popstars are boring, and Leo Sayer is a needy blabbergob, but the others are just lovely. Especially the lovely Shilpa, who I expected to be rather precious as a massive Bollywood star, but is actually totally humble and sweet and just lovely lovely lovely and trying ever so hard.

The Goody family on the other hand are a repugnant shower of deeply unlikeable sub-humans. Jade is just a genuine idiot who's learnt to flaunt her ignorance for a lot of money, her boyfriend is some sort of half-smiling, vacant-eyed shadow, but the mother... Put me in a house with that woman, that aggressive, childish, beastly, bellowing, thick-as-two-short-pigshits woman, and it'd be like that episode of 'The Shield' where Vic puts two rappers in one of those shipping crates and tells them to sort it out and then in the morning only one of them walks out and says he wants breakfast. I am telling you.