Word is a four-letter word

Over the last few weeks, I’ve come to realise something. I can’t write properly in February. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the unremittingly grim weather. Maybe the cold atrophies the bit of my brain that strings all the words together. There’s a frozen blockage in my brainpipes that I can’t get through. Every time I try to write something (and this includes blog postings), the words come out all twisted and mangled and broken, and I’m stuck with bad grammar and clumsy phrasing and poorly-selected adjectives, and I struggle to get the pictures in my head out onto the page.

It’s driving me crazy. Mostly because I’m one of those people who actually enjoys the process of writing. A lot of writers hate it. Not me. I like all the research and thinking and wondering and toying with words. Welding together disparate ideas. Solving problems. I love the moment when I can take the stabilisers off the wobbly sentences and watch them sail away confidently, like a proud parent shepherding the malformed offerings and turning them into independent entities that I can hurl out into the world.

Writing this is just another attempt at blasting through the blockage. Let’s hope it worked.

My Friend Flickr

Seeing as I am pathologically incapable of writing anything coherent recently, I’ve been tinkering with the blog again. I’ve scavenged some old photos taken on my mobile phone and uploaded them to my Flickr account – you can find the link under Places and Spaces in the right-hand column.

When I finally get around to buying a memory card for my camera, I can start sticking all kinds of crap there. But for now, it’s just miniscule grainy pics snapped on my phone.

That is all.

When I'm right, I'm right

An addendum to my earlier post about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. I just saw this breaking news.

See? I told you. This has nothing to do with Freedom of Speech.

Sometimes I hate being right.

Cartoon Fretwork

Comicbook curmudgeon Harvey Pekar once famously said: "Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures."

You can even set the world on fire.

Much has been written in recent days about the cartoon pictures published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and a huge amount that has been written is either a load of shit, or it just misses the point completely.

Let’s see if I can be the voice of reason for a change. Before I get my rant on, a couple of things to get out of the way: I absolutely, totally and wholeheartedly support Freedom of Speech in all ways, shapes and forms. I might not like what you’ve got to say, but I support your right to say it. But, and it is a huge big ol’ booty of a but, no matter what Jyllands-Posten says, or how they are spinning the hell out of this, this really has very little to do with Freedom of Speech.

Freedom of Speech is the Big Honking Red Herring in all of this. Just because you can publish anything, it doesn’t mean that you should. Or that this Freedom should automatically override other important concerns like sensitivity and quality control, two things lacking in this situation.

Secondly, for the purposes of context, the cartoons can be seen here.

Lastly, let’s have a quick look at the dictionary definition of cartoon. Ready?

1. A drawing depicting a humorous situation, often accompanied by a caption.
2. A drawing representing current public figures or issues symbolically and often satirically.

OK. Pre-amble over, this is what I think:

The cartoons are a bunch of crap. In every conceivable way. Badly drawn. No discernable satiric intent. And, here’s the kicker: They Just Aren’t Funny. Offensive things can be funny, and vice versa. Just doesn’t happen to apply in this scenario. There’s no getting around this one: the shit ain’t funny.

For a cartoon to succeed on any level, it has to be either Funny or Satirical. Neither of those elements are present here.

I find it nigh on impossible to discern any kind of tangible satirical intent behind the cartoons. And the reason I can’t find any satirical intent is because there is none! I’ll prove it to you:

Imagine a cartoon where there’s a drawing of Jesus Christ stringing up a couple of black guys from a tree, with a burning cross in the background. Offensive, right? Not funny. Or satirical.

But, the cartoonist protests, there are devout Christians in the Ku Klux Klan! At this point, any sane newspaper editor would have shown the cartoonist the door.

Know why? Because it is blatantly offensive in so many ways. Some extremists are Islamic, but not all worshippers of Islam are extremists. See? It may be a subtle distinction for your average Danish newspaper editor, but it’s pretty damn obvious to me.

The most contentious cartoon portrays Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. It paints all Muslims as suicide-bombers, which is a blatant falsehood. Just like my Jesus example, which paints all Christians as white supremacists.

Muslims the world over have every right to be outraged. Obviously, I think death threats and destruction are not a proportional response. It’s excessive and tragic and just continues to perpetuate this solitary skewed image of Muslims, because it’s the only one which gets into the news cycle.

But cartoons attacking any other strata of our Burning Global Village, be it blacks, gays, women, Jews, Christians, whatever, would just not have seen print in newspapers the world over in the same way. No editor would even consider publishing such things.

And that is the great hypocrisy at the heart of this whole situation. In a nutshell: Newspaper prints cartoons. Angry Muslims riot. And people then turn around and go: “See? Those Muslims are violent! The cartoons were right!”

Depressing and dispiriting on so many levels.

Bing!

Today is February the 2nd. Which means that it is Groundhog Day. (This is annoyingly apt, seeing as all my days at the moment seem to be depressingly similar to one another. Anyway...)

Punxsutawney Phil has decreed that there will be six more weeks of winter. Little fucker. I’m getting fed up of this weather. Frickin’ brass monkeys out there today.