Vanish...

 Anyone who has wondered what happened to my updates can finally click this link, to see everything I've posted on the website I've been working for: http://www.sickchirpse.com/author/luke-haines/
 As my "inner circle," regular readers should be warned that the site in question sucks, but hey. They're gonna pay me for it come July, so I have to be a whore and follow the money. Sorry kids.

Stupid Conversations...

 This probably doesn't shock anybody, but I spend a lot of my time having pointless, surreal conversations with people. I've decided to post a couple I had today in the name of entertainment value. I'm aware of how arrogant this makes me.

 [A friend of mine hasn't been well, and was telling me about her plans. She'd also been giving me shit about a typo I made previously in the conversation.]

Emily:

That's ok, mate is picking me up to spend the night round theirs. He has chromes and his finance works for NHS so kind of company I need. Just need people around who don't mind me not being lively and on form and can cope with me being slightly subdued for a little bit.

But I can offer ice-cream and good food, just spent a fortune on a food shop. :)

Me:

 You meant "crones ."

 Unless he has a disease that makes him shiny and silver.

Emily:

Yes, I did. Were you aware your typo disease was catching?

Me:

 Is this the guy?

Emily:

 No, you twat.

Me:

 :-D!

[Pause]

Me:

 I don't want to worry you, but I think the symptoms are getting worse...

Emily: [Gives up and finds someone else to talk to.]

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[Someone posted a holiday photo on Facebook and it immediately looked, to me, like an angry, screaming monster face. Nobody else seemed to see it, but the image is below. I posted it as my status to see if anyone else could see it.]

Me:

 Can you see the screaming face in my status?

Sam:

 I can, but only if I squint...

Me:

 God dammit!

 This is evolution in action, you know! Pareidolia means I'd already be up a tree while all you fuckers were trying to work out if something was a tiger!

Sam:

 I think I'd be fine, considering I haven't left the house today...

Me:

That's how they get you. 47% of tiger attacks take place in houses in Pensford. It's a little known made-up fact. Personally, I'd be scuppered by my lack of a tree.

Sam:

 You just have to distract them with a box of Frosties. Apparently, they think they're great... 

Me: 

Ah. I did manage to slow this one down by letting it sell me petrol...

Although I'm slightly worried he might come back in a tank, unless I've misunderstood the slogan...

Sam:

Ha. That's when they're truly dangerous. 

[At this point, we both returned to not being zoologists.]

 

Because Nobody Has Really Mentioned Thatcher's Death, Yet...

 If I try - really try - I can remember Margaret Thatcher.

 I have to cast back to my dim and distant childhood, but I remember the news that she had been replaced by John Major. I remember being vaguely glad about this, but only out of a toddler's sense of gender loyalty; nobody, after all, could want a girl in charge, surely?!

 I was five.

 In that sense, I didn't really live under Thatcher at all. Certainly not for any of the formative parts of my life except the big, basic ones (walking, talking, being born.) But history has a knock-on effect. I don't need to be of my grandparents' generation to disapprove of what Hitler did, any more than I need to be an American baby boomer to be quietly glad that Kennedy didn't go to war over Cuba. Thatcher still had an influence on my generation; we grew up in the shadow of her ghost. She was the reason the trains didn't run on time.

 With all this in mind, and now in possession of a brain that doesn't equate politics with ownership of a pre-pubescent penis (or lack thereof) it would be easy to slate her politics and list my objections to her ideologies.

 Easy, but disingenuous, because although I loathed her political beliefs, that's not always enough to make me hate someone. I disagree vehemently with many people on politics. I don't like Schwarzenegger's politics, but I like his movies. I disagree with a lot of what Penn Jillette says, but I'm still a fan. I can even see the charm in Reagan, hateful and belligerent as his actions may have been towards his fellow human beings.

 Ultimately, this is why I could never mourn Thatcher. Not because of her callous gutting of infrastructure or obvious contempt of the working classes, but because of her fundamental soullessness. I could never imagine her enjoying a film, or laughing at a magic trick, or even charming anyone. Anyone at all. She remains in my mind's eye as well as in archive footage a fundamentally joyless person; an icy, grasping, loveless figure.

 Hunter S. Thompson said that Richard Nixon hated "sex, music and football in that order and was no fun at all," but even Nixon, for all his sleaze and paranoia and criminality, seems a bastion of charm and warmth when compared to Thatcher.

 Like her namesake, the Iron Lady was cold and hard and lifeless even when in motion; she was her own blunt object, used to batter the poor and capable of wiping herself guiltlessly, emotionlessly clean afterwards. A bloodless automaton whose only ability to experience anything close to love seemed rooted in numbers and profits.

 I honestly don't think there's any archive footage I've seen in which she laughs - I mean really laughs. Even her tears on being removed from power seemed sterile and mechanical.

 All politicians suffer from a strange inhumanity; they all seem like they're trying to either stifle or imitate natural human emotions. Thatcher never even seemed to be trying. She just didn't look like she had natural emotions. If I had to guess at her three most common moods, I'd say "displeasure," "irritation" and "asleep."

 So I can't listen to people who tell me I should mourn the passing of a fellow human being, because I'm really not sure I could bring myself to list her as one.

 Maybe that makes me selfish and heartless, but that's surely to be expected.
 I mean, I was born under a Thatcher government.