I have to admit I succumbed and bought the Arctic Monkeys album, Whatever You Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. I cringe at the thought, because – call me a snob if you will - they are just too popular. The album is selling like there’s no tomorrow, the band is swimming in awards and their US tour (starting March 13th in San Francisco) is sold out. This is the kind of resumé that would normally make me run a mile in the opposite direction.
For the Arctic Monkeys, though, I have to make an exception. This, of course, is a Sheffield band, writing songs about Sheffield life in Sheffield language. The lyrics, found behind fascinating titles such as “Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But...” and “You Probably Couldn't See For The Lights But You Were Staring Straight At Me”, are really what makes the Arctic Monkeys. The music is good (sort of) too, but let’s face it, there isn’t anything very original there. Anybody who has experienced Sheffield life as a young person (or as an old person who likes to walk in young people’s shoes) cannot help but smile in recognition at these lyrics. Laugh out loud in recognition, even.
Heaven knows what anyone who has not experienced Sheffield life, or even life in the UK, makes of this stuff. They clearly make something of it, and either I underestimate them or they don’t really care too much about the lyrics.
Take these lines, for example, from The Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured:
Ask if we can have six in
If not we'll have to have two
Well you're coming up at our end aren't you
So I'll get one with you
Oh, won't he let us have six in
Especially not with the food
He could have just told us no though
He didn't have to be rude
---
Drunken plots hatched to jump it, ask around are ya sure?
Went for it but the red light was showing
And the red light indicates doors are secured
Now, I can’t really assess how much sense these lines would make to you if you were from, let’s say, Portland, Oregon. To me, they make perfect sense – so much so that I find myself inadvertently grinning as I recall numerous journeys home in a Sheffield taxi after a drunken night out.
Of course, there is nothing special about what the people in this song are experiencing – the same thing takes place every Friday and Saturday night in every town in every country in the Western world. A group of six intoxicated friends try to hail a cab and find the driver rudely announcing that he won’t accept such a large group, especially not as they have brought some food with them. (In other words, the taxi driver just thinks that they are drunk, messy and more trouble than it’s worth.) The group splits up and gets into two cabs. In one of them, the drunken passengers decide to do what English people would describe as a “runner” – jumping out of the cab and escaping without paying. Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for the driver) they discover the little red light that indicates that the doors are locked (usually intended to prevent people from falling out of the cab).
In other words, nothing special. Just ordinary, universal, drunk people’s antics. But described in such a poetic way, these scenes paint a picture that conveys a lot more about life in the north of England than the story itself. Not with quite the brilliance of John Cooper Clarke ("you know you're in the wrong hotel when a fight breaks out in the minibar") – yet, but who knows what the future might hold. And like I said, I really didn’t think anyone outside of Sheffield, or at the very least the UK, would get this. But clearly they do, and snobbery or no snobbery, on balance this is really a good thing as it ensures that we will hear more from these guys in the future. Provided, of course, they don’t change their perspective due to their newfound fame. Actually, a recent interview suggests they already have, and make no secret about it. Can’t say I’m surprised.
Anyway, as I was putting the Arctic Monkeys album on my iPod, I noticed that the little bar at the bottom of iTunes said “1733 tracks, 4.1 days, 6.79 GB”. Amazing! Music works exactly like clothes! It doesn’t matter one bit how much of it you have, you still can’t ever find anything half decent. My iPod actually claims that I could, if I wanted to, listen to it for over 4 days without hearing the same tune twice. If the iPod was interested in what I had to say, I would tell it that out of these 4 days and the 12 or so made up by CDs not yet transferred to the iPod, I struggle to find two hours of good music to listen to.
I was what you might call an early adopter of the iPod, which in plain English means that I didn’t get one of the natty G4 versions that other people, such as my husband, did. Instead I got a machine that looks less cool, weighs more and has a much shorter battery life. On the other hand, the simple fact that I did get my iPod at a time when it was still unusual and brought out the wow in people means that I have grown incredibly attached to it. I still feel as though owning an iPod makes me special. I still want to believe that when people see those white headphones (which by the way are the best in-ear headphones ever) they think “oooh, there goes a woman who not only has plenty of dough but knows how to spend it”. (And I am, of course, still concerned about those news reports that came out a few years ago saying that white headphones shouldn’t be worn when going out as they might attract muggers. Diamond ring? Designer handbag? No, baby, it’s your headphones that give it away!)
Anyway, the question is, what now? Do you continue to schlep this white brick wherever you go, because if you ever did get a sudden urge to listen to, say, Karma Chameleon by The Culture Club, you could? Or do you let the iPod stay in the living room (where it is still very functional) and get yourself a little Flash stick for the gym? My husband is travelling to Europe tomorrow and just came to ask me (as CTO of our household) if I would be awfully kind and put a small selection of his favourite music on our son’s 256 MB stick, so that he didn’t have to go through the trouble of carrying his iPod. To be honest, this got me a little scared. Has the iPod run its course? Is it time for it to retire? A frightening but sadly relevant thought.
I’m so glad I have important issues to worry about, so that I don’t have to be weighed down by petty stuff!
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Sunday, February 05, 2006
A feminist heroine, gone
Today, we say goodbye to yet another feminist who paved the way for all of us. (Although, like many of her contemporaries, she must have been horrified to witness the anti-feminist movement flare up again towards the end of her life.)
Betty Friedan died at home in Washington on Saturday, February 4th – her 85th birthday. The most important item on her feminist resumé was almost certainly the 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique”, in which she helped explain to the world that the notion of a woman’s main purpose in life being that of a wife and mother was not some law of nature, but simply a big, fat lie created by society.
I am eternally thankful to Friedan for having had the courage to speak out on these issues at a time when this was revolutionary and must have involved great personal risk. Her life and work are to be celebrated, and I rejoice in the fact that the world was blessed with this brilliant, clear-headed lady. At the same time, I am saddened – deeply, deeply saddened – by the ease with which the 21st century is turning its back on the efforts by Friedan and her kinsfolk.
The idea that women are somehow, by the very same “mystique” that Friedan spoke of, predestined to put their roles as wives and mothers before any others is rampant in today’s Western society. While in Friedan’s day, tradition was considered sufficient as a reason, today’s argument in a world of crumbling traditions is biology. Hormones, nervous systems, inherited “instincts” or all of the above and more are quoted as mumbo-jumbo “reasons” for women’s lasting legacy as home makers first and wage earners second.
Why? Why?!! I struggle to find an answer. While I, in true Generation X fashion, manage to stay aloof and blasé about many upsetting things, this is one of the horrible stains on our society that I can but hang my head and cry about. Having once myself been a victim of the myth of femininity, it is all the more poignant to me that for each step forward Friedan and her contemporaries took, we have taken a considerable step back.
Let’s just feel confident that Betty Friedan – also the founder and first president of the National Organization for Women in 1966 – knew in her heart that the work for which she helped lay the foundation will continue. There are enough of us out there, and we will never give up.
Betty Friedan died at home in Washington on Saturday, February 4th – her 85th birthday. The most important item on her feminist resumé was almost certainly the 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique”, in which she helped explain to the world that the notion of a woman’s main purpose in life being that of a wife and mother was not some law of nature, but simply a big, fat lie created by society.
I am eternally thankful to Friedan for having had the courage to speak out on these issues at a time when this was revolutionary and must have involved great personal risk. Her life and work are to be celebrated, and I rejoice in the fact that the world was blessed with this brilliant, clear-headed lady. At the same time, I am saddened – deeply, deeply saddened – by the ease with which the 21st century is turning its back on the efforts by Friedan and her kinsfolk.
The idea that women are somehow, by the very same “mystique” that Friedan spoke of, predestined to put their roles as wives and mothers before any others is rampant in today’s Western society. While in Friedan’s day, tradition was considered sufficient as a reason, today’s argument in a world of crumbling traditions is biology. Hormones, nervous systems, inherited “instincts” or all of the above and more are quoted as mumbo-jumbo “reasons” for women’s lasting legacy as home makers first and wage earners second.
Why? Why?!! I struggle to find an answer. While I, in true Generation X fashion, manage to stay aloof and blasé about many upsetting things, this is one of the horrible stains on our society that I can but hang my head and cry about. Having once myself been a victim of the myth of femininity, it is all the more poignant to me that for each step forward Friedan and her contemporaries took, we have taken a considerable step back.
Let’s just feel confident that Betty Friedan – also the founder and first president of the National Organization for Women in 1966 – knew in her heart that the work for which she helped lay the foundation will continue. There are enough of us out there, and we will never give up.
Morals, my *rse
As anyone who knows me will tell you, getting annoyed is one of my favourite activities. I find getting annoyed a cleansing experience – a bit like having a good cry. (Provided the annoyance or crying is not about something that really matters to you, of course, in which case the experience is not so much cleansing as downright uncomfortable.)
I’m pleased to say that there isn’t exactly a world shortage of essentially unimportant issues for me to get annoyed about. Some of them have the added benefit of providing several sources of irritation at once. To my delight, in this week’s issue of The Yellow Scene, I found something just like that.
Here’s the beef. An employee of a local branch of Walgreens, the US drugstore and pharmacy giant, cites his “moral objection” to the use of emergency contraceptives (so called morning after pills) as a reason to refuse – with Walgreens’ blessing – to fill prescriptions for such products.
This is not a new issue, of course. The Walgreens employee in question is not the only pharmacist with a “moral objection” to doing his or her job. The predicament this puts patients in – especially in the case of emergency contraceptives – has sparked some debate in the US. As explained by this article in The Washington Post, there are pharmacists out there willing to go even further in their quest to hamper people’s legal rights to obtain prescribed medicines. On the other hand, there are also employers willing to stand up for those rights where Walgreens won’t.
Because, according to Walgreens spokesperson Michael Polzin (source here) “pharmacists can remove themselves from filling prescriptions that they have moral objections to. But we require them to either have another pharmacist at that store fill it, or, if another pharmacist is not on duty, contact store management, and the store manager will make arrangements for that prescription to be filled at another pharmacy before the patient leaves the store. The intent of Walgreen’s policy is to make sure that a patient doesn’t leave the store wondering where the prescription can get filled”.
Oh, well, that’s alright, then. Or is it? No, I don’t think it’s alright, and that’s the first of several sources of annoyance here. Walgreens is (in part) a pharmacy. In fact, it’s one of the biggest in the United States. Walgreens dominates the retail market for drugs and by its very presence makes it difficult for other pharmacies to survive - other pharmacies that may well have a different view of its customers’ importance. Walgreens makes enormous profits each year, and a considerable share of these profits are generated by filling doctors’ prescriptions. Amongst the prescriptions that Walgreens fills, and thus uses to line its shareholders’ pockets, are prescriptions for contraceptives.
What Mr Polzin is effectively saying here is that Walgreens relationship with its customers is one-sided. If Walgreens wants to do what it’s there for, it will. But if it doesn’t, then it won’t. It’ll simply tell the customer standing in one of its stores holding a valid prescription for a product stocked right there in that store to take her prescription elsewhere. Hey, they’ll even tell her where to take it, so she won’t be leaving the store “wondering”. Well, I sure hope I’ll never find myself in the position of having to take the morning after pill, but if I did, I might just be left wondering why I ever bought anything from Walgreens in the first place.
So this is my first gripe – that a giant corporation can be so arrogant towards its customers and get away with it. Why aren’t people in uproar, deserting Walgreens in hoards? Why don’t people have “moral objections” to handing over their hard earned cash to someone with so little respect for the people on whom they rely for their survival?
Well, I’d say it is because quite frankly, we’re not talking about customers in the usual sense. Not customers like you and me - dignified, upstanding citizens. No - we’re talking about some tramp who should have thought before she got herself into a mess! In other words, a customer you can afford to offend without taking any great risk. Far more risky, then, to offend the other side – the pro life lobby and its fringe supporters.
My second gripe lies with the “moral objection” itself, in other words with the individual who refuses to fill prescriptions on the grounds that he or she does not agree with the use of the prescribed drugs. In this context, I should first of all point out that I don’t have a problem with people objecting to the use of emergency contraceptives, contraceptives of any other kind, or any pharmaceutical products whatsoever. If I was given the opportunity to sit down to a mutually respectful discussion about it, I might be fairly vocal about the fact that I don’t share these opinions, but that is not the point here.
The point here is that we’re talking about people who have gladly accepted jobs as dispensing pharmacists. People who, just like Walgreens but on a scaled down level, have no problem with making money from selling drugs to people. As long as they’re not just any old drugs, but drugs that the individual in question personally approves of. As long as they can choose not to do their job, should the “wrong” customer happen to stop by.
Never mind that all the drugs we are talking about are legal. Never mind that licensed doctors have written the prescriptions. Never mind that the drugs in question are sitting right here, behind the counter in the store. And never mind that the wages that the employee happily accepts from the employer have come from revenue generated, in part, by the sale of these same drugs. Never mind any of those things. They aren’t important enough to persuade the holier-than-thou employee to reconsider his or her decision to work for the pharmacy in the first place. All you need to do to stay on that moral high horse is to turn your nose up at a prescription handed to you by one desperate, unfortunate woman whose individual actions you disapprove of. Well, give yourselves a pat on the back - that’s right big, hard and clever, as we say back home.
My third gripe – and I think it will be my last one for tonight although I’m sure I could think of more if I tried – is how toothless the law is on this matter. In fact, in some states, the law seems more concerned with protecting pharmacists’ right to keep their jobs and their moral high ground than with preserving the rights of Americans to obtain the prescription drugs they are entitled to. Taken to extreme, what this means is that what people may take and when they may take it is not decided by those authorities responsible for authorizing the prescription and sale of certain drugs, nor by the doctors licensed to prescribe those drugs. It is decided by the moral tyrants who defy the democratic process by which these decisions were made, and will do what they can to obstruct the rights of other citizens. And this, quite frankly, makes me more than a little annoyed. It makes me downright angry.
I’m pleased to say that there isn’t exactly a world shortage of essentially unimportant issues for me to get annoyed about. Some of them have the added benefit of providing several sources of irritation at once. To my delight, in this week’s issue of The Yellow Scene, I found something just like that.
Here’s the beef. An employee of a local branch of Walgreens, the US drugstore and pharmacy giant, cites his “moral objection” to the use of emergency contraceptives (so called morning after pills) as a reason to refuse – with Walgreens’ blessing – to fill prescriptions for such products.
This is not a new issue, of course. The Walgreens employee in question is not the only pharmacist with a “moral objection” to doing his or her job. The predicament this puts patients in – especially in the case of emergency contraceptives – has sparked some debate in the US. As explained by this article in The Washington Post, there are pharmacists out there willing to go even further in their quest to hamper people’s legal rights to obtain prescribed medicines. On the other hand, there are also employers willing to stand up for those rights where Walgreens won’t.
Because, according to Walgreens spokesperson Michael Polzin (source here) “pharmacists can remove themselves from filling prescriptions that they have moral objections to. But we require them to either have another pharmacist at that store fill it, or, if another pharmacist is not on duty, contact store management, and the store manager will make arrangements for that prescription to be filled at another pharmacy before the patient leaves the store. The intent of Walgreen’s policy is to make sure that a patient doesn’t leave the store wondering where the prescription can get filled”.
Oh, well, that’s alright, then. Or is it? No, I don’t think it’s alright, and that’s the first of several sources of annoyance here. Walgreens is (in part) a pharmacy. In fact, it’s one of the biggest in the United States. Walgreens dominates the retail market for drugs and by its very presence makes it difficult for other pharmacies to survive - other pharmacies that may well have a different view of its customers’ importance. Walgreens makes enormous profits each year, and a considerable share of these profits are generated by filling doctors’ prescriptions. Amongst the prescriptions that Walgreens fills, and thus uses to line its shareholders’ pockets, are prescriptions for contraceptives.
What Mr Polzin is effectively saying here is that Walgreens relationship with its customers is one-sided. If Walgreens wants to do what it’s there for, it will. But if it doesn’t, then it won’t. It’ll simply tell the customer standing in one of its stores holding a valid prescription for a product stocked right there in that store to take her prescription elsewhere. Hey, they’ll even tell her where to take it, so she won’t be leaving the store “wondering”. Well, I sure hope I’ll never find myself in the position of having to take the morning after pill, but if I did, I might just be left wondering why I ever bought anything from Walgreens in the first place.
So this is my first gripe – that a giant corporation can be so arrogant towards its customers and get away with it. Why aren’t people in uproar, deserting Walgreens in hoards? Why don’t people have “moral objections” to handing over their hard earned cash to someone with so little respect for the people on whom they rely for their survival?
Well, I’d say it is because quite frankly, we’re not talking about customers in the usual sense. Not customers like you and me - dignified, upstanding citizens. No - we’re talking about some tramp who should have thought before she got herself into a mess! In other words, a customer you can afford to offend without taking any great risk. Far more risky, then, to offend the other side – the pro life lobby and its fringe supporters.
My second gripe lies with the “moral objection” itself, in other words with the individual who refuses to fill prescriptions on the grounds that he or she does not agree with the use of the prescribed drugs. In this context, I should first of all point out that I don’t have a problem with people objecting to the use of emergency contraceptives, contraceptives of any other kind, or any pharmaceutical products whatsoever. If I was given the opportunity to sit down to a mutually respectful discussion about it, I might be fairly vocal about the fact that I don’t share these opinions, but that is not the point here.
The point here is that we’re talking about people who have gladly accepted jobs as dispensing pharmacists. People who, just like Walgreens but on a scaled down level, have no problem with making money from selling drugs to people. As long as they’re not just any old drugs, but drugs that the individual in question personally approves of. As long as they can choose not to do their job, should the “wrong” customer happen to stop by.
Never mind that all the drugs we are talking about are legal. Never mind that licensed doctors have written the prescriptions. Never mind that the drugs in question are sitting right here, behind the counter in the store. And never mind that the wages that the employee happily accepts from the employer have come from revenue generated, in part, by the sale of these same drugs. Never mind any of those things. They aren’t important enough to persuade the holier-than-thou employee to reconsider his or her decision to work for the pharmacy in the first place. All you need to do to stay on that moral high horse is to turn your nose up at a prescription handed to you by one desperate, unfortunate woman whose individual actions you disapprove of. Well, give yourselves a pat on the back - that’s right big, hard and clever, as we say back home.
My third gripe – and I think it will be my last one for tonight although I’m sure I could think of more if I tried – is how toothless the law is on this matter. In fact, in some states, the law seems more concerned with protecting pharmacists’ right to keep their jobs and their moral high ground than with preserving the rights of Americans to obtain the prescription drugs they are entitled to. Taken to extreme, what this means is that what people may take and when they may take it is not decided by those authorities responsible for authorizing the prescription and sale of certain drugs, nor by the doctors licensed to prescribe those drugs. It is decided by the moral tyrants who defy the democratic process by which these decisions were made, and will do what they can to obstruct the rights of other citizens. And this, quite frankly, makes me more than a little annoyed. It makes me downright angry.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Groundhog Day
If the groundhog sees his shadow
On this special day
It will frighten him back to his burrow
And that’s where he will stay
Six more weeks of winter…they say!
Well, I didn’t see the groundhog come out (Did anyone? Where does he actually live?). But as it was sunny here today with very few clouds, I guess that when he did pop out of his burrow, he would have seen his shadow. So another six weeks of winter it is, then. Which doesn’t seem so strange, really, as we are only at the beginning of February. In fact, if we ONLY get another six weeks of winter, I will be delighted.
And what I’d like to know is: Why, when the groundhog comes out again in six weeks, does he then NOT get frightened by his shadow? What did he learn in those six weeks about the nature of shadows, that he didn’t know before? And why doesn’t he remember his shadowistics from year to year?
I don’t suppose I’ll ever get any answers to these question, and my prospects for an early springtime will continue to be guided blindly by this confused little dude. It added an interesting aspect to the day, though – but why didn’t Google put a groundhog on its logo?
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