"Di"-monds Are For Heather (Ever) (Forever)

So, is Heather Mills being treated the same as (the late) Princess Diana? Any legitimate comparisons that might be made—focusing narrowly on media harassment—don't stand a chance of getting an airing, since posing such a sacrilegious question in the first place will mean you’re drowned out by people vociferously, even ferociously, endorsing this sentiment:

“Myabe [sic] cuase [sic] she is trying to tell everyone and more importantly herself that she is the next diana,I DONT THINK SO diana had 100% more class”. [Thanks, Digital Spy forum]

Thing is, you don’t have to hold a torch for either of these women—you could even, for example, have quite a low opinion—to find it grotesque to watch them in the press essentially being continually burned at the stake for our viewing pleasure.

Moreover, I’m watching with some astonishment as this era of Heather-hate gives people the freedom to explore the limits of their disgust for the disfigured. Her loss of a limb is not just a rhetorical weapon that might be drawn as a last resort; it now seems to be compulsory, even if it’s just as a comic aside, to use her leg as a stick to beat her with. [Note to Jimmy Carr: you can have that joke for free. It suits you.] The gags, the taunts; it’s everywhere, and it has an intensity that reminds me of a crowd just before a riot kicks off. Tastes like blood running down the back of your nose.

If you don’t spend much time watching ITV2—and, God love you, why would you?—you may not know that Katie “Jordan” Price and Peter “Twat” Andre are hosting their own chat show on Friday nights. In between their mighty guests last week—the twins off Big Brother and Brian Dowling off Big Brother—they had a moment of topical comedy where a one-legged girl mudwrestled a Paul McCartney “lookalike”. They got her to remove her prosthesis in order to hit him with it, so it was no surprise that she fell over almost immediately.

Okay, so the Prices are subnormal, but surely someone on the production team must have had a conscience and a sense that... some kind of... basic... moral... Oh, all right, I’m just fantasising. I’ve seen what TV production looks like under the wrapping. Still, there are people even outside TV who relish the idea of being able to make jokes like this because it’s a chance to throw off the shackles of “political correctness”. Finally we can all say what we mean, they cry; the guilty pleasures of such exciting transgressions might even shatter some of our preconceptions, etc etc. This is balls, of course; it’s simple bullying and they’re relishing it. “I’ve had six amputee girls crying their eyes out because they’re getting bullied at school because people are joking about the loss of my limb,” said Mills, who then sadly rather eclipsed that point by generally ranting in the manner of a BNP candidate who thinks he’s not being secretly filmed.

Exactly half my life ago I entered a school essay competition with the submission that sick jokes and gallows humour were an unconscious, instinctive attempt to ward off misfortune. I’d like to take this chance to revise that hypothesis in favour of the simpler observation that, while no subject should be sacrosanct and a good, clever joke remains just that in any context, some people really are just utter ( *cough* )

—though that would probably have earned me a substantially lower mark.

“Heavy metal is my lifestyle”

I’m indebted to thelondonpaper for bringing this four-month-old story to my attention this week, albeit as a half-arsed bit of filler:

Man gets sick benefits for heavy metal addiction
19 June 2007

A Swedish heavy metal fan has had his musical preferences officially classified as a disability. The results of a psychological analysis enable the metal lover to supplement his income with state benefits.

“I have been trying for ten years to get this classified as a handicap,” Roger Tullgren, 42, told The Local. “I spoke to three psychologists and they finally agreed that I needed this to avoid being discriminated against.”

The ageing rocker claims to have attended almost three hundred shows last year, often skipping work in the process. Eventually his last employer tired of his absences and Tullgren was left jobless and reliant on welfare handouts.

But his sessions with occupational psychologists led to a solution of sorts ... “I signed a form saying: ‘Roger feels compelled to show his heavy metal style. This puts him in a difficult situation on the labour market. Therefore he needs extra financial help’. So now I can turn up at a job interview dressed in my normal clothes and just hand the interviewers this piece of paper,” he said.

The manager at his new workplace allows him to go to concerts as long as he makes up for lost time at a later point. He is also allowed to dress as he likes and listen to heavy metal while washing up. “But not too loud when there are guests,” he said.

Tullgren currently plays bass and guitar in two rock bands and says that he tends to get a lot of positive reactions for daring to be himself. “Some might say that I should grow up and learn to listen to other types of music but I can't. Heavy metal is my lifestyle,” he said. [Source: The Local (Sweden)]

They're alive! - Part 1

Idling through Freeview the other night, flaneurette and I are talking with BidTV on in the background. The shot is framed so that there’s only one area your eye is really drawn to, and it’s not the product. We’re talking with one eye on this mesmerising view, and then we both suddenly yelp as the damn things move.

The woman doesn’t move her arms. She’s not breathing any more than she already has been; in fact, she’s mid-sentence. What has she got in there, and does she know it’s alive?

Shortly after this shot she moves her right arm up to hold the toothbrushes, but it’s at an odd enough angle that you realise immediately someone in the gallery has told her to for God’s sake obscure them as they’re all anyone can concentrate on.

The clip is better quality if viewed here and at its actual size (button shown below), giving a clearer image of just what it was that freaked us out. We’re not over-reacting, are we? I mean, it’s not right.

They're alive! - Part 2

All right, time for a poll.
[Poll #1081702]