I'm going to take a break now from the ultra-heavy religious stuff for a moment now, and focus on something a little more... tangible. My current situation is that I'm stuck at my mother's house, 300 miles away from all that I consider 'home', looking after the dog and cat while she buggers around scuba diving. I'm not bitter, of course, I wouldn't have gone with her if she'd offered and, quite frankly, any situation where I get a week's access to a house full of food and beer is acceptable. It's just the sheer frustration of not knowing this town that I find so bad. Anyway, that's not the point of this blog post. The point is the quality of the reading matter that I have down here.
There were a couple of days' overlap of me being in Poole while my mum and her husband were still around. They make it a point of picking up a newspaper every day, which is admirable, but not when the newspaper in question is the Daily Mail.
Freeze here for a second. For the Americans and illiterate among you, (which is unlikely, I know, since you'd be reading this) the Daily Mail is a piece of turd disguised as a tabloid paper, which counts the day wasted if it doesn't mention asylum seekers, paedophiles or the Government at least three times on the front page in an inflammatory and ill-argued manner. At least half the paper is given up to celebrity gossip and overall sensationalism, and at least a quarter of the rest is sport. I have never seen anything which could pass for a decent article within its covers. Resume.
Generally, I try and avoid reading it, aside from the crossword and puzzle pages, which, because they're aimed at the working classes, could probably be performed by a lab rat. Coincidentally, this is about my mental level on the very rare occasion that I'm awake before 3pm. Funnily enough, Lexx, my partner in infamy and confirmed lefty swine, rather enjoys reading it, bursting into delighted laughter after every sentence because of its outrageousness. Apparently it's better than most other modern fiction.
Anyway, the only part of the paper I regularly peruse is the TV guide. In the Mail's case, it's hidden deep within the depths of a 'lifestyle' section, which usually contains celebrity interviews and fashion tips for the aspiring chavette. Needless to say, I handle its pages carefully, and usually while wearing very thick gloves.
Last week's cover of this section boasted an interview with Billy Connelly, who really deserves better than the Mail. However, this is not what caught my eye. To the left of the page, under the unassuming subtitle 'Hello Dolly', was a short length of text which, apart from telling you all you need to know about the Daily Mail and its normal readership, has caused me to wake up screaming at 5am every night since I first laid eyes on it. The sentence was as follows:
'Were Madonna and Barbie separated at birth?'
I'll let that sink in for a moment.
OK, I'm sorry to subject you to that, but misery loves company, right?
It took me a while to fully comprehend the enormity of that statement. This is a rough transcription of my thought processes immediately following the discovery of this literary nightmare: 'Madonna. That's the pop singer, right? OK, good, I pass that pop culture test. OK, now Barbie. That's... the doll. They're saying that Madonna Ciccone, one of the most popular recording artists of all time (I wonder why they don't call them singers anymore? [Stay focused, you.] Sorry, boss.) is actually related to a mass-produced children's toy, that was first invented about a year after Madonna's birth. Also, do these people know nothing about how toys are made? Unless they've been lying to us all along, and dolls are really mutant plasticy babies that were taken away from their abomination of a mother after spawning...' And so on. You really don't want to hear the rest of that.
But after reading that, I knew that was it. Society was beyond saving. Hell, any civilisation that could even comprehend such a nauseatingly dumbass subject as that doesn't DESERVE saving. But, many years from now, the survivors of the apocalypse to come will look back, and see that as the point of no return.
