Morts Musings

So, with the Christmas craziness over, and fast becoming a feint, alcohol blurred, memory, most of us are struggling with the “dog days” of January, & looking forward to a break from silly spending while the finances recover.
Sadly, life just doesn’t seem to work like that, even for those who don’t have to cope with the impending reality of the end of January tax deadline, the marketing men have no intention of letting us, or our bank balances, rest.
You thought you had ’til at least easter before the next celebration of commericalism? Oh no, that’s still several months away, which wouldn’t do at all, you have to spend your money on something between now and then, don’t you now?

The up and coming event I’m talking about is, of course, St Valentine’s Day. You could say that I’m just an embittered single, and maybe I am, but I can honestly say that, even from within relationships, Valentine’s has always been one of those “holidays” which I think is a little messed up, and which seems to be more about retailers trying to cash in, than about any notions of enduring love, or romance.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite a romantic, sentimental soul, under all my cynicism & curmudgeonly complaining, but I fail to see why I need to have a day set aside (be it by society, religion, or the power of marketing) to make a special effort for my beloved.
I’m all for romantic gestures, and showing my other half that I care, but I’m quite capable of doing so at any time of the year, & I rather resent the contrived, non-spontaneous nature of what Valentines day has been warped into by commercialism.
I mean, why limit such shows of affection to one, particular, day a year? Call me old school, but I don’t need a special day to buy posh chocolates or flowers for my girlfriend, & there’s not much better than taking a loved one out for a romantic dinner; going through the ritual of enthusiastically approving of all the outfits and dresses which she decides to try on beforehand, and, in the process, trying to gauge whether she’s wearing any of her “special” lingerie under the outfit. Ahem, flippant thoughts of after-dinner events aside, a romantic meal with one’s significant other is hard to beat, and absolutely shouldn’t be a once a year event, likewise with gifts, Valentines flowers are all very nice, but what about the other 364 days of the year?

I wouldn’t mind it if it was something which hadn’t become compulsory, but surely any holiday about love which actually causes relationship problems, if one doesn’t comply fully with what society expects (& mostly this seems to equate to spending money), has become twisted to the point of losing its meaning. So, if you’re attached you pretty much have to spend out, at what’s a fairly tight time of the year for most people, or else risk the righteous wrath of one’s other half.
On the flip side the holiday also serves to remind singles that they’re single and lonely, and, damn it, can you get any of your friends to go out for a few consoling beers? well, not if they’re attached, obviously!

So there you have it, Valentine’s is a rubbish holiday! If you’re single it’s an uncomfortable reminder of loneliness, while if you’re attached, you’ll find expectations foisted upon you, and you’ll be a bad, bad person if you don’t spend, spend, spend for that special day.
Overall the only winners seem to the negligent types, who are seemingly quite content to get all the year’s romance over and done with in one day, and the vendors of Valentine’s related gifts.

Firstly, and most importantly, if you wish to make a donation to help the survivors of this terrible disaster, be careful which organisations you donate through; there have already been reports of fake web sites being set up by contemptably sick b*stards who are trying to profit from the earthquake. Well known charities, like Oxfam, have their own Haiti Earthquake pages and are probably the safest route for those who wish to help by giving an online donation.

I first caught news of the Haiti Earthquake late on Tuesday night while catching some headlines on the BBC before going to bed. Even at those early stages it seemed clear that the damage caused by it, and it’s aftershocks, was going to be immense, but over the last couple of days, as more and more news has filtered out of the impoverished Caribbean nation, the true scale of the devastation has started to become clear. It beggars belief.

The quake itself measured 7.0 on the Richter Scale, and as such is classified as a “Major” earthquake, while even the aftershocks measured 5.5. and 5.9 on the scale, making them significant earthquakes in their own right. To put things a little more in perspective, a magnitude 7 earthquake is the equivalent of a 32 megaton nuke, 1000 times more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb. In addition, the quake was relatively shallow occurring only 10km below the surface. Shallow quakes are less likely to trigger tsunamis, but also tend to cause more damage in their immediate area, as we’re seeing in Haiti at the moment.
Even in a developed nation, with well constructed structures, a magnitude 7 earthquake would be a serious event, but in a nation like Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, the level of destruction is almost unimaginable! That the quake’s epicentre was only 15km from the densely populated capital, Port-au-Prince, has only exacerbated the situation.
Many of the city’s buildings were poorly constructed leaving them especially vulnerable to the quake, and it appears that many of those killed or injured were indoors at the time of the quake, or close to buildings which collapsed. Even so the death toll is staggering. So far it’s reckoned that 50,000 have died although there are fears that this could rise to as much as 500,000. Half a million people, it’s a simply stunning figure!

In many ways though the quake was only the beginning of the disaster, and looking after the survivors is now the main priority. Many Haitians live on less than a dollar a day, & even in normal times the country is heavily reliant on foreign food aid, but providing clean water, food & shelter for the thousands of, now homeless, survivors is going to be a huge task. Also, with so many dead to recover from the rubble, there’s a massive risk of disease.
Offers of aid and support have been flooding in pretty much since the quake struck, but even so, given the Herculean scale of the task, more help is needed. Most major charities have started appeals, for example Oxfam’s Haiti Earthquake donation page.

Even embittered old news junkies like myself need a break from time to time, and over the holiday period I took a couple of weeks off without watching any news, &, I have to say, I feel so much better, not to mention less jaded by the world, for having done so. Still, with the new decade well and truly underway I figured I should, once again, start taking a cynical and curmudgeonly look at what’s going on in the world around me…

One of the things which I’m very glad hasn’t come to pass, was the descent into another global financial crisis, which, for a brief time, it looked like Dubai World’s financial problems might have sparked.

In the end it took a $10bn bail out from Abu Dhabi to save the troubled company, and in return the company showed it’s gratitude by naming it’s latest project, the Burj Tower, after Abu Dhabi’s ruler Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan. The Burj Khalifa, as it’s now known, opened earlier this week, and is now officially the world’s tallest building, beating the previous holder of the title, the Taipei 101, by about 300 metres.

As part of the publicity surrounding the tower’s opening two intrepid base jumpers were granted permission to leap from it’s top in a death defying record attempt. I guess it was only going to be a matter of time before someone made such an attempt, with or without permission, so maybe the owners were just trying to harness the inevitable publicity which such a stunt is bound to generate. However, before would be daredevils start booking their flights to Dubai it’s worth pointing out that the event was strictly a one off, and neither the owners, nor the Dubai authorities are likely to take kindly to further, unauthorised, jumps.

I saw this piece in the Telegraph last week, and have only just had time to comment on it; The long and short of it is that a group of people decided to take up residence in a big old Paris mansion, but without bothering to go through any of the standard stuff which one generally does when one moves into a new home, you know, things like signing a contract or paying rent; to put it another way, they’re squatting.
So what’s newsworthy about that, you ask? squatting is hardly a new concept. Well, fair question, the thing in this case is that the squatters are actually a group of clean cut, well-educated, professionals, who, at least partly, are protesting about the price of rented accommodation in Paris, and, to their credit, they’ve done a fair amount of maintainence and repairs on the property, which has been uninhabited for about 40 years. Even the mansion’s owner, having met the group, was persuaded that they were a decent bunch who weren’t wrecking her property, although legal complications have meant that moves to evict the group are still on-going.

For all the cross channel rivalry that’s existed between Britain and France, for pretty much a millenium now, I do have to say that, as a nation, the French have a great attitude to protesting and protecting their rights, an attitude which sadly the Normans seemed to leave on the continent, or which, at least, has been well and truly beaten out of the British at some point over the last thousand years.
Still, for all I admire the Gallic attitude to asinine laws and regulations, any Brits planning a holiday in France this year would probably be safer to take a conventional approach to arranging their accommodation, and, for that matter, travel arrangements, I’m not sure that even the French would take kindly to one borrowing an unused car or van. No, even in France car hire is probably still the safest bet for getting around, unless you’re planning on your stay being extended, and “at the pleasure” of the French authorities.

It’s been a couple of weeks since my piece about the ethics of Christmas, and with the silly season still ongoing I feel the need to engage in another festive rant.
The post-Christmas sales, or New Year’s sales if you prefer, are another mid-winter tradition which marketing monkeys seem to have convinced us are a must-do holiday event; As if it wasn’t enough that people have been running around like headless chickens throughout December, and in some cases November too: buying gifts for distant relatives, tasty treats for over the Xmas period, and stocking up on essentials, just in case the country grinds to a standstill under a centimetre or two of snow; we’re expected to continue the shopping frenzy through into the new year, as the retailers, who a week earlier were mostly charging us top notch for the pleasure of wading through their crowded stores, in search of that special something, now expect us to go through it all again, as they desperately try to shift all the stock which they weren’t able to sell us in the lead up to Christmas.
However, for all that the stores are still manic to the point of inducing “pedestrian-rage”, at least the New Year’s sales offer some decent bargains, and even an old curmudgeon, like myself, can’t grumble, too much, at a bargain, even if it does mean wading through a sea of vacuous shopaholics!

Still, the sales’ attraction to me is purely pragmatic; they’ve got stuff I want, it’s cheap, I’ll go buy it and then get the hell out of the shops as soon as possible! So it confuses me how the marketing people have yet again managed to hype and glamourize, what should be a series of simple financial transactions into some kind of major must-do holiday event in it’s own right. Are they really that good at their jobs, or are people, in general, just really easy to manipulate? I guess the answer’s a bit of both, but that the latter is especially true if the words “bargain” or “sale” are involved; everyone likes to think they’re getting a good deal, and apparently that extends to buying pretty much anything, even things which we didn’t necessarily want or need!

What I really don’t get is stuff like this! Why on earth would an online multiplayer game feel the need to mimmick real world craziness & hold a holiday furniture sale?! I can see the point of struggling round the shops looking at sofas if you need a real settee, but honestly does your make-believe elven wizard really need a new dining table? I thought these games were meant to be about killing monsters, collecting “phat” loot, & “grinding” for levels? not the finer points of interior design & furniture arranging! Don’t get me wrong I spend a lot of time playing computer games, even these kinds of computer games, and accept that as hobbies go it’s all pretty sad, but surely this is a new nadir in the world of fantasy gaming?!
I’m wondering if the sorts of people who would partake in such a fanatsy furniture sale are just Sims players who’ve gotten lost? Yes, very prejudicial of me, but even geeks need someone to look down on. *grin*