Proud of their ignorance...

Tuesday evening, and I'm back. The theatre-thing is over, done, and finished: I'll report on the whole experience later, when I've had a chance to reflect more on it. The blogs will now be back into their regular order... I may even (no promises, only idle threats) do a few extra. I've a bit too much bile build-up: the spleen needs a bit of a steam-clean.
I've been slobbing about tonight, not getting ready for a performance. As part of this general slothfulness, I've read a few pages in "Investigate" magazine. Hmm. I may carry on with it, but I was struck by the fact that they don't (obviously) edit / proof-read / correct their Letters to the Editor. I tend to judge a magazine by its readers: and it seems that the ones motivated to write in to "Investigate" on this particular month were people to whom English is a very foreign language, and who also find the idea of making communications clear by the use of punctuation ands grammar is laughable. Two of the letters I honestly could not understand. Mind you, they were written by people attempting to defend Christianity by proclaiming the virtues of not reasoning, so perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised that they weren't making sense. A 300-word sentence with no punctuation, however, will not gather any friends.
I also kept a half-eye on the tele: there was a story about some disgusting members of our society who took pleasure last night in driving their four-wheel-drive behemoth onto a farmer's paddock, and then proceeded to run down a bunch of pregnant ewes - one of which they poured petrol onto and set alight - the poor creature even survibved this barbarism, but needed to be put down by a broken-hearted farmer.
These actions are, of course, beyond ignorance. Nothing can excuse the people who did this. Readers of this blog will know that I am a bleeding heart liberal, a man who leans further to the left than that tower in Pisa (depending on where you're looking at it from, of course..). But I cannot see any reason why people who do things like this are still breathing. My grand-daughter's oxygen requirements are more important. Fuck it - a mangy dog has a greater claim to life than these sick bastards.
And while I enjoyed and shared in her outrage, the person who signed the email "Pegy" that was screend by TV3 really should have either taken a year or two to learn the basics of sentence construction, or just shut up. Why, oh why, do people insist on taking pride in their ignorance?
Reading: Yes! I can read again! Peter Maass, "CRUDE WORLD The Violent Twilight of Oil". Oh - and a Batman comic.
Listening to: Led Zeppelin, "Mothership".

More "Paper Heroes":

He had wakened six heroes. Six killers. To do so, he, and his helpers, had distanced themselves from their own society. He hoped like hell that he had done the right thing.
Chapter Nine.


9.57am, Pacific Time, November 6th, 2386.
The six Sleepers had slept naturally this time. Or so they hoped. They had been taken to individual, anonymous rooms, equipped with bed, shower, toilet, and hand basin. There was nothing to give them a hint of what the outside world was like. There sleep had been deep, seemingly untroubled. But things had happened to them overnight they had no way of knowing about. Their heads, resting on a light-as-air pillow, had been probed, measured, educated. Their blood had been analysed, sniffed at at, and then their skins had been subtly sprayed. When they awoke, they would not be the same men who had gone to their rooms to sleep. While the Sleepers slept, they had been reprogrammed.

They had all woken to a soft, insistent voice, addressing them personally. To the surprise of none of them, it was a cat. And their lack of surprise was of grave concern to them all.

If the cat has been a particular friend to mankind for millennia past, the past five hundred years had brought them even closer. The cat was one of only three animals to have been gengineered and nanotech and embot enhanced. It had gained a new palate, a time-telling ability, a greater brain, and a longer-term memory. The reshaped palate gave it the ability to speak with reasonable clarity, and the enlarged brain gave them a wider world-awareness and a speech centre. Gengineered cats were also far larger than their old-time domestic counterparts. They were now the size of a Labrador dog, and were much more massive in their forequarters: they needed the greater strength to carry the enlarged head. They had the mental ability of a ten year-old child – one from the old days, that is: one that hadn’t been enhanced with nanobots.

Justin Grey had been paired up with a thigh-high Puma. Blunt and Whistler had been given matching ginger tabby cats, Hanno’s cat was a Norwegian Forest cat, Crayne’s companion was pure black with flashing green eyes, and John Prestor, the loneliest of them all, had been gifted a delicate female calico cat.