The Nature of the Beast

Well, it's another day in Britain, and yet another child has been mauled to death by a dangerous dog.

Four-year-old Jean-Paul Massey, from Liverpool, was killed by a pit-bull terrier at his grandmother's home. As the family mourns, pit-bull owners and breeders around the world prepare their defences in supporting the keeping of these supposedly-domesticated animals as pets.

Here's the simple issue we are faced with: nature did not make pit bulls. These dogs were bred, by humans, for violence nearly 200 years ago and the genetic make-up of the dog dictates that they will always be dangerous.

'According to one RSPCA inspector, quoted in The Independent (21 May 1991, page 3), "They're bred to kill. No other dog is like them". ' (biblicalcreation.org.uk)
And we wonder why these dogs turn on our children and kill them.

Even the United Kennel Club (ukcdogs.com), stout supporter of all dogs and largest all-breed performance-dog registry in the world, tells us the breeds were bred as 'catch-dogs' in the 19th Century to hunt boar and to keep livestock under control. The Kennel Club states they combine 'the gameness of the terrier with the strength and athleticism of the bulldog. The result was a dog that embodied all of the virtues attributed to great warriors: strength... indomitable courage.'

Do warriors sound like friendly household pets?

Jean-Paul Massey's parents don't think so. In fact, I think the owners of the pit bull showed a distinct lack of courage by feeling the need to keep a violent dog as a pet.

Owning a dangerous dog and being surprised when it mauls a child is similar to using the butt of a Beretta as a hammer, then feeling unfairly treated when a round unloads and blows off your hip-bone. Perhaps now we'll take responsibility for our actions, before it happens again.

I'll never forget time when a violent, crazed dog squeezed under the school gate and chased the pupils around the playground, jaws snapping. I was 10. We scattered, screaming. I was one of the first to dive into the classroom and slam my back against the door. I watched from the window as the sternest teacher in the school marched out into the yard with a rolled-up newspaper, taking the dog's attention off the pupils. In retrospect, that's one of the bravest things I've ever seen a man do.

Later that week a dog handler from the RSPCA visited the school. I learned a valuable lesson about interacting with dangerous dogs: Don't interact.

The Dog Handler's Advice:
Don't make eye contact. Locking eyes is an invitation to fight.
Don't smile. Smiling bears teeth. Another invitation.
Don't run. Dogs can run faster.
Do stand still, like you're a tree. Sure, the dog might pee on you. But dog pee washes off. Dog teeth-marks don't.

This was in the early nineties- a time when dog attacks were frequently making the papers. The 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act- outlawing the breeding, sale, exchange or ownership of the pit bull and all cross-breeds related to it, had recently been implemented.

Jean-Paul Massey's death clearly indicates that, once again, the British government have done little but deliver more bureaucracy and big talk. Both Labour and the Conservatives failed to protect the country's inhabitants by allowing dog owners to hide the genetic history of the dog, thereby squeezing out through loopholes in the law.

I would have thought it was a pretty simple process- If a dog shows any indication of being bred from banned breeds, it should only be kept and controlled by recognised institutions- the police, the RSPCA, the military, or a respected scientific research organisation. In short, only organisations that are trained to handle these dogs professionally should be allowed to keep them- and even then, only with good reason. If they don't need them, the dog should be destroyed.

That's the nature of the beast.

Meeting James Ellroy

‘As long as it gets me print, I’ll continue to perform in an exuberant manner.’
-James Ellroy

‘AMERICA!’ He screams into the microphone.

Behind the microphone stand James Ellroy begins to recite a segment of his long-awaited latest novel, Blood’s a Rover. The stage lights of Manchester’s Dancehouse Theatre, the latest venue in his UK tour, douse him in a macabre red light. This is probably at his request, the colour tone enhancing the noir feel evident in his work. This production design is brought to you by Waterstones, who’s events are described as ‘superb’ by The Independent.

In the scene Mr Ellroy is reading, two kids are staking out a woman’s house with the intention of breaking in and stealing her underwear. No Ellroy novel would be complete without a dab of depravity.

Throughout the reading, Ellroy, 61, dressed low-key in a brown-green jumper and chinos, stands with his feet unusually far apart. And doesn’t just read the text- he acts it out; he lives it. If his writing describes that a character ‘yawned’, he’ll stretch the word as he reads it and he’ll lean back, injecting his work with vivid onomatopoeia. He goes on to snore into the mic and grab his crotch, as if the characters he imagined have invaded the body of their creator.

It is evident that ‘”The Reverand” James Ellroy', as he acceptably calls himself, has the same searing enthusiasm for reading as he does writing. In fact, after an introduction compiling memorized quotes from other writers including WH Auden, who he describes as ‘A British poofter’, he declares in no uncertain terms: ‘I live for words.’

It is presumably Ellroy’s intention, by way of this book tour, to make us read a HELL of a lot of them. Blood’s a Rover is the third in his ‘Underworld USA’ trilogy, and he advises us that unless you have read American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand- each 600 pages a piece- we won’t fully appreciate the final instalment. Regardless, he holds up Blood’s a Rover like a preist holds up a bible and barks, ‘Buy this fucking book. It’ll bite your boogaloo.’
It’s going to be an expensive night for me.

After reading a segment of his work, he welcomes our ‘most invasive questions’. Through audience interrogation we learn that he was influenced heavily by Don DeLillo’s Libra (A book I plan to read), but most of his inspiration can be put down to ‘shit-kicking by women’ – possibly why most of his male characters are, as he puts it, ‘boozed-up dope fiends.’ It’s therefore believable when he says he financed his divorces with ghost-written film scripts. We learn of his major influences, who he cites as ‘Gay Edgar Hoover’, ‘Howard Dracula Hudson’ and ‘Tricky Dick Nixon.’ His anger at the history of American politics- certainly the periods he has lived through- oozes out of him evidently, although he never accuses anyone directly. In fact, he makes it clear that he ‘would never criticise or rag on (his) own country on foreign soil.’ His affinity for his own country is apparently so strong that he claims the only travel he will do is for book tours. Ellroy has a lot of passion for his home town of LA, but still describes it as the kind of place where ‘you come on vacation and go home on probation’.

He goes on to describe someone he knew as an ‘underworking cashew-dicked cocksucker’. My lack of shorthand skills prevents me from jotting the name of the recipient of that epithet. I will remember, though, Ellroy wiggling his smallest finger and a bout of laughter from the audience.

A young man in the audience asks how he felt about the movies that had been made from his books. Mr. Ellroy responds by saying he is more than aware that his books are ‘politically incorrect and unfilmable,’ but he admits that, in Curtis Hanson’s adaptation of L.A. Confidential (1997), he felt leads Kim Basinger and Russell Crowe ‘lacked chemistry’. Overall he was ‘nothin’ but grateful’ for everything that Hollywood had done for him, including opening him up to an immense new audience. It's understandable- I wouldn't have heard of him without the film.

I ask him if he had any advice for budding writers. Mr. Ellroy’s response: ‘Don’t write what you know. Write what you always wanted to read, but nobody wrote.’ Valid, trend-bucking and vaguely familiar. Maybe he was already asked somewhere. Maybe many writers say this. (But as it happens, I’m writing something that fits Mr. Ellroy’s bill: stay tuned for Once Upon a Time in Manchester, coming to a cinema near you when I get my Goddamn act together...)

Mr Ellroy rounds off with one more memorized quote: the last stanza of Dylan Thomas’ ‘In My Craft or Sullen Art’.

‘Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.’

He thanks us and walks off stage.

In the foyer I manage to buy Blood’s a Rover and American Tabloid, but they are out of The Cold Six Thousand. That will have to be an Amazon job.

In the signing queue I contemplate whether it would be just too cheeky to leave my blog card with him. I’m the fan of his work. Would I be out of order asking him to read my work?

At the front of the queue I decide to play it safe. He signs Blood’s a Rover, with a dedication, and he agrees to a photo. I give my camera to the man from Waterstones and as he presses the shutter, Mr. Ellroy growls like a dog.

Bush

Bush came to power illegally
And started a war that’s quite evil; he
Couldn’t get out
Of Iraq but did shout,
‘I hope men and fish exist peacefully!’

Modern Woman has Shot Herself in the Foot

“Garth, marriage is punishment for shoplifting in some countries!”



- Wayne (Mike Meyers), Wayne’s World


A recent article in the Telegraph (6/8/09) outlines a very serious issue in Britain- and most of the developed world.


“‘Some women have become ball-breakers,’ says Francine Kaye, known professionally as The Divorce Doctor, with an eponymous website. ‘It's not entirely our fault, because the demands of the workplace have changed us, and brought out our more masculine side. But unfortunately we're taking that home with us every evening into the domestic sphere, and often bullying our men into submission.’”


This article sums up why so many of life’s problems occur- whether it is in the workplace, as part of family life or involving relationships.


Some months ago, after doing a lot of anthropology research online, I learned something that would change the way I think from that moment on. Ten thousand years ago, women needed to be protected. Like today, they were generally physically weaker than men. Civilized society had not been formed. Saber-toothed tigers, and other life-threatening creatures, could not be tamed or domesticated. Women needed protecting from these ferocious animals as well as other massive dangers- including, of course, those brought by other humans. These dangers are now, largely, absent. At times of prehistoric strife, there were no police, call-centres, supermarkets or maintenance men (or maintenance women, for that matter) - the man HAD to take care of any problem. He was responsible, solely, for finding food, making warmth and ensuring safety. If he didn’t fulfill these duties, his spouse and baby- and likely he himself- would die.


Today, if a man doesn’t pull his shit together and take care of things, the woman just divorces him. It is, I’m guessing, harder to offer women anything they need that they can’t already get themselves. This could be why “51% of women under 50 are single” (in Britain). –Dailymail.co.uk.


Despite this growing female independence, women will always have needs. I call these requirements ‘the three Ps’- provision, protection, and you know what the third one is.


It cannot be denied that, as women gain more equality, both men and women behave less and less like our sexually respective anthropological ancestors. As the divorce rates rise around the world, is this a sign that women are becoming harder for men to please? I suspect that, in days gone by when gender roles were more defined, it was a lot easier for couples to stay together.


You may be wondering what decade- or century- I’m from, but regardless, family life in Britain needs to re-stablise. Can we quell the spiralling divorce rate? Are women to blame for this? Do we even need marriage anymore? Without the suffragette movement- a time when women like Emily Davidson died for women’s rights- would women be happier with less equality and hence less responsibility? Would men be happier with the imbalance?


I am all for mutual respect between men and women. I would never encourage people to purposefully make women feel bad. But the evidence seems to suggest that sexual equality is impossible. Men and women are different. It is this difference- and society’s masking of it- that is preventing many people from living happy lives.


The situation in Britain may be different to that in other parts of Europe. Of what I’ve seen of European TV, it seems that most of it is chauvinistic innuendo-based programming- thinly veiled pornography for men. Tarrant On TV, a British programme celebrating the most daring and usually the dumbest TV output from around the world, features Italy’s smutty shows on a regular basis.


Italy has the seventh lowest divorce rate in the world.


The countries with the lowest three divorce rates are Libya, Georgia and Mongolia. Women in these war-torn and oppressive countries don’t have a great deal of rights.


On the flipside, World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index says Iceland is the most sexually equal country- scoring ‘4’ on a scale of 0-1. (I don’t get this measurement either.) Guardian says Icelanders are the “least hung up people in the world.”


In ’08 Iceland had the highest divorce rate in Europe. In ’07 it was Sweden- the country the Forum claimed was best for women’s rights. Interestingly, Thelocal.se, a Swedish newspaper, claims 60% of marriages in their country are failing.


On the whole it seems that the more rights women have in a country, the harder it is to maintain a marriage as a citizen there. On the flipside, more rights for women allow them a better quality of life. It can be suggested, then, that marriage is not the way forward in any country in this day and age.


I would have thought the idea of couples agreeing on masculine and feminine roles in the household would have been a start. Various newspaper websites I have trawled through while researching this seem to suggest that women taking household tasks away from men (calling a tradesman in to fix something, for instance) cause a lot of domestic disputes.


If equality is what is being sought in this debate, then I might as well suggest that both men and women are equally responsible for the growing failure of marriage and sustainable relationships in the 21st century. My personal opinion is that total sexual equality is an unattainable goal. Everybody is different, and one cannot suggest that all women should be, and one day will be equal to all men. That ‘difference’ makes equality difficult to define, but I’ll give it a shot: the further away we get from the cave, a time when the men hunted and the women mothered, the less happy everyone will be with each other.


Anyway, pass me that spear. I’ll get something in for tea.

Global Warming is Inevitable

‘It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.’
-T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The Metro, the paper found on most buses in Britain, recently published a photograph of a melting iceberg- a familiar but poignant image in today’s ever-warming world. This particular iceberg, however, had a vaguely facial appearance to it- an elongated enclave resembling feminine lips, a distorted, long nose of melting ice, and one long, shadowy eye-like ledge. This crumbling, frozen mass seemed trapped in the centre of the otherwise smooth walls of the iceberg. On the left of the picture, a section of the iceberg wall juts over the space where you’d imagine the other eye to be. Under the arctic sun, a stream of ice water falls from this space, gushing into the freezing sea below.

The paper suggested that the face was that of Mother Nature herself, crying over the damage done to her planet in the short space of time humans had lived on it.

There was, however, one angle not covered by the piece- an issue seemingly unnoticed by the paper and even the United Nations. I thought I should provide that angle. It may have proved too radical, however, as it didn’t make it onto the letters page.

The ‘Tears of Mother Earth’ photograph (3/9/09) was excellent, and another vivid reminder of what we are doing to the planet. However, I doubt humankind will take heed from Mother Nature’s supposed warning. We’ve been powerless to stop our own ravaging of the planet for 1.6 million years- when man first harnessed the power of fire. This was the beginning of global warming- our harmful effect on the planet. The trend cannot be ‘stopped’, as the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon suggested. But it is important that we delay this devastation as much as we can by encouraging the use of more efficient power sources than oil, petrol and wood.

It has been brought to my attention, since sending this letter, that I’m right. Not regarding my eco-thoughts, though; just the fact that my ideas are too far-fetched for newspapers. My original argument was this: the first fire that man created was the first step towards today’s extremes of global warming. The ability to burn things, as the Jungle Book’s King Louie reminds us, is what sets us apart from every other species on the planet. (‘Give me the power, of man’s Red Flower so I can be like you!’)

Yes, we are a million miles (and years) away from Paleolithic flint-bashing. But nature gave us the gift of combustion. I think nature made us harm the planet. I’m surprised so few people agree with me. But fair enough: it has only been since the industrial revolution- starting at the end of the 18th century- which our polluting habits have started to take their toll on the Earth.

It has also been brought to my attention that, even though the planet is heating now, it will inevitably cool off- then heat up again. This is due to ‘Milankovitch cycles’, natural patterns in the change in the Earth’s temperature.

My point is that we can’t stop it. Our reliance on cars to get from A to B, and our need for oil to keep the lights on around the world, show no sign of letting up. I’m just going to keep separating my waste for recycling and using public transport where I can, but I won’t be waging war on Shell Oil and ranting at passers-by from my tree-house.

Not in the near future, at least...

Falling Gold: A Dream

‘Heaven and Earth are not humane; they treat the people as straw dogs. The Sage is not humane; he treats the people as straw dogs.’
-Dao De Jing


The totalitarian government is a monster with many faces. Somewhere, behind the metropolitan sheen of the city, lies a terrible, deviant power. The people are afraid. But out in the village, the city could be another country. They just don’t bother us at all.

Until now.

I am summoned to the city- by whom, I don’t know. My guess is, they realised there’s no point fighting fire with fire. Why not send in me, a nice guy who won’t pull any tricks?

I leave my family behind, abandoning the simple barbecue and all the day’s serenity. The city needs me.
I am taken to a building much taller than I realised existed there. We don’t have much money back home... Nobody does. Who built this thing?

I’m alone in the lobby when the lift behind me pings. I turn around: the lift is pure gold. My yellowed reflection parts vertically as the doors open. The interior: more gold. The walls, floor, and ceiling all connect into a sickeningly opulent prism that I feel compelled to step into.

The elevator rises with a jerk. I’m lifted so high and so fast that my guts slam into my pelvis, and I swallow hard, ears popping.

The door opens. I can hear the sound of construction- a distant, clanging sound from below. Am I safe? Gold bars are stacked all around me, and these piles stretch down much further than they should. I realise there is no floor beyond the lift.

Silently, like the door, the floor of the lift retracts, and the infinite reflections of the floor and ceiling start to narrow. It’s a trap. I back myself to the wall, but soon there is nothing underneath me.
I fall. The clanging gets louder, and rows and rows of gold blur upward into each other.

Falling Dream

“It's only when gravity starts to take over you begin to think about your body.”
-David Soul, AKA ‘Hutch’ from Starsky and Hutch

I’m soaring up to the planet’s boundary, to what is technically space, vast and freezing. The land I know as home, it feels- and is- distant and I miss it already.

The curvature of the Earth is clearly visible. It was daytime when I left Earth; right now, the time of day can’t be classified. It feels like night, like the time on Scout camp when we crept out of the tent and lay gazing at the stars. It’s colder now, though. And there are an incalculable number of galaxies blinking at me, millions of light years away. The universe, sprawling, is scattered haphazardly in every direction. But when I look back down at the Earth- which is incomprehensibly immense- the stars vanish from my peripheral vision and the glow of my home planet is all I can see. The ground looks rocky and uninhabited, but in that rugged terrain there are entire cities teeming with life, reminding me of how truly small I am- how small we all are.

And then I fall.

There’s a blurry ache in my chest that used to be a recognisable heartbeat- my pulse is so high that every artery wants to escape my skin and live forever in the clouds. My back arches. I’m forced by gravity to look upwards- the blackness of space has already disappeared and I’m surrounded by blue ozone. An occasional wisp of cirrus cloud whips across my face like speeding fog, leaving cold moisture on my skin to be dragged backwards over my scalp.

I’ve never been so conscious of the air around me, yet despite this- and now, because of the velocity of my own body through this air- I can’t breathe any of it in.

The detail of the land below me, albeit minimal, becomes clearer and spreads wider like a dramatic camera trick I’ve seen in countless flashy films. I can see the rugged texture of farmland. The ocean is out of sight.

I’m almost home.