The real problem here is that we’re all dying. All of us. Every day the cells weaken and the fibres stretch and the heart gets closer to its last beat. The real cost of living is dying, and we’re spending days like millionaires: a week here, a month there, casually spunked until all you have left are the two pennies on your eyes.
Personally, I like the fact we’re going to die. There’s nothing more exhilarating than waking up every morning and going ‘WOW! THIS IS IT! THIS IS REALLY IT!’ It focuses the mind wonderfully. It makes you love vividly, work intensely, and realise that, in the scheme of things, you really don’t have time to sit on the sofa in your pants watching Homes Under the Hammer.
Death is not a release, but an incentive. The more focused you are on your death, the more righteously you live your life. My traditional closing-time rant – after the one where I cry that they closed that amazing chippy on Tollington Road; the one that did the pickled eggs – is that humans still believe in an afterlife. I genuinely think it’s the biggest philosophical problem the earth faces. Even avowedly non-religious people think they’ll be meeting up with nana and their dead dog, Crackers, when they finally keel over. Everyone thinks they’re getting a harp.
But believing in an afterlife totally negates your current existence. It’s like an insidious and destabilising mental illness. Underneath every day – every action, every word – you think it doesn’t really matter if you screw up this time around because you can just sort it all out in paradise. You make it up with your parents, and become a better person and lose that final stone in heaven. And learn how to speak French. You’ll have time, after all! It’s eternity! And you’ll have wings, and it’ll be sunny! So, really, who cares what you do now? This is really just some lacklustre waiting room you’re only going to be in for 20 minutes, during which you will have no wings at all, and are forced to walk around, on your feet, like pigs do.
If we wonder why people are so apathetic and casual about every eminently avoidable horror in the world – famine, war, disease, the seas gradually turning piss-yellow and filling with ringpulls and shattered fax machines – it’s right there. Heaven. The biggest waste of our time we ever invented, outside of jigsaws.
Only when the majority of the people on this planet believe – absolutely – that they are dying, minute by minute, will we actually start behaving like fully sentient, rational and compassionate beings. For whilst the appeal of ‘being good’ is strong, the terror of hurtling, unstoppably, into unending nullity is a lot more effective. I’m really holding out for us all to get The Fear. The Fear is my Second Coming. When everyone in the world admits they’re going to die, we’ll really start getting some stuff done.
..in the 21st century, we
don’t need to march against size zero models, risible pornography,
lap-dancing clubs and Botox. We don’t need to riot, or go on hunger
strike. There’s no need to throw ourselves under a horse, or even a
donkey. We just need to look it in the eye, squarely, for a minute,
and then start laughing at it. We look hot when we laugh. People
fancy us when they observe us giving out relaxed, earthy chuckles.
Tags: feminism
After all, you can argue – argue until you cry – about what
modern, codified misogyny is; but straight-up ungentlemanliness,
of the kind his mother would clatter the back of his head for, is
inarguable. It doesn’t need to be a ‘man vs woman’ thing. It’s just a
tiff between The Guys.
Seeing the whole world as ‘The Guys’ is important. The idea
that we’re all, at the end of the day, just a bunch of well-meaning
schlumps, trying to get along, is the basic alpha and omega of my
world view. I’m neither ‘pro-women’ nor ‘antimen’. I’m just ‘Thumbs
up for the six billion’.
Tags: sexism
Or perhaps we should just junk the whole idea of getting
married in the first place. I’m generally against anything where
you’re supposed to change your name. When else do you get
named something else? On joining a nunnery, or becoming a porn
star. As an ostensibly joyful celebration of love, that’s bad company
to be in.
Tags: marriage over-spending
In the midst of this hormonal gloom, however, the calvary finally arrives, over the hill, jangling its spurs, and epaulettes shining in the sun: my green library card. Now I'm 13, I can get adult books out of the library, without having to borrow my parents'cards. And that means I can get secret books out. Dirty books. Books with sex in.
Caitlin MoranTags: humorous-quotations
Quite how a heterosexual couple hiring a female cleaner ends up as a betrayal of feminism isn't terribly clear- unless you believe running a household is, in some way:
a. an inarguable duty of womenkind- that, in addition, can
b. only ever be done out of love, and never for cash, because that somehow "spoils" the magic of the household. As if dishes know they've been washed by hired help, instead of the woman of the house, and will feel all sad.
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