Waiting, Oven, Fringe, Politics
Aug. 11th, 2022 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootI'm waiting, which I never enjoy. It should teach me patience and application. Maybe it will. What it has taught me so far is that those web pages that promise you a sparkling oven with bicarb of soda and white vinegar are written by people who like to work.
'Just a bit of elbow grease,' they coo. No, no it ain't. It's a hard boring inefficient slog. All that has happened is that the dirt in my oven now gleams. It's rubbish.
I do have chums who really enjoy the physicality of cleaning, rubbing and scrubbing and having something just right, just the way they like it, by the end of their effort. I respect how they feel, I just don't share it. I clean when cleaning is necessary, and hate it, and am bad at it. This is why, if I can pay someone else to do it for me, I will.
And of course I have one of those bottles of overnight cleaning death, stuff to melt holes in your skin. The packet warns that your arms and wrists must be covered, then provides you with cheap plastic gloves that break instantly, and even before they break, just about cover your hands. The choice seems to be horrible chemicals, or my oven looking like some small yet terrifying entrance to hell. If I am to use it (and I really don't want to) I need to buy gauntlets.
We have buddies joining us. Two turn up tonight and leave on Monday, one joins us next Saturday for the Fringe! *Waves!*
I have a free ticket for this tomorrow. https://www.festivalofpolitics.scot/events/elect-her
It's only for an hour and a half (though I am very tempted by the other lecture overlapping it; https://www.festivalofpolitics.scot/events/cost-of-living-crisis) I can meet the others in town before/after, which may give me a sense of how the Fringe is shaping up. And now I am fighting my distinct lack of keen re the Holyrood event.
No, it's not a lack of keen; when I look at the programme, there are several bits and pieces I would like to attend, but what's the point of putting it on during the Fringe? It's overwhelming.I also have a meeting this afternoon on account of our local group's event, and suddenly realise I got no sleep last night because of the waiting.
Oh, I am tired.
Why even bother going to the political event? It is pointless, I am not going into politics. In a world where Johnson and Truss are winners, what sane person could bear it? It's dementor land, a game of drones. Of the two most politically adept people I know, one won't touch it (R:'it doesn't pay enough for all the abuse,') and the other is doing well but sees the wall ahead.
I am trying to think of any of my female friends who want the nonsense. Two became involved in Union politics,a couple in local politics, one became a UKip councillor. She was convinced the world was going to end in 2012. After it didn't, she did her best to make it happen by voting for Brexit. I tried to put up with her, because she was a pleasant person and however potty her views, she was never racist or offensive, but when she started retweeting Paul Joseph Watson, I was done.
I know plenty of politically adept women. They care, they really care, but UK politics is a sub circle of Hell right now, and a large chunk of the population continues to vote against its own interests for no reason beyond media induced stupefaction. I truly believe it is going to get worse before it gets better. Sunak, whom I assumed was extraplanar greedy as opposed to the windsock that is Liz Truss, now tries to sweet talk the Tory party by offering this: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/rishi-sunak-tory-leadership-policy-torn-apart_uk_62ea4a54e4b00f4cf235e32e
Nicely vague threats towards removing freedom of speech, just as the right to protest has been severely curtailed by the new policing act that went through in April, all of it an authoritarian's wet dream.The good news is that Sunak's desperate pandering may well go nowhere. But it does leave us with an utterly vacuous mind cosplaying Thatcher up and down Downing Street.
So why go? When the world beyond the lecture walls is full of art and theatre and friends are out there, why learn more about things beyond me to change?
'Just a bit of elbow grease,' they coo. No, no it ain't. It's a hard boring inefficient slog. All that has happened is that the dirt in my oven now gleams. It's rubbish.
I do have chums who really enjoy the physicality of cleaning, rubbing and scrubbing and having something just right, just the way they like it, by the end of their effort. I respect how they feel, I just don't share it. I clean when cleaning is necessary, and hate it, and am bad at it. This is why, if I can pay someone else to do it for me, I will.
And of course I have one of those bottles of overnight cleaning death, stuff to melt holes in your skin. The packet warns that your arms and wrists must be covered, then provides you with cheap plastic gloves that break instantly, and even before they break, just about cover your hands. The choice seems to be horrible chemicals, or my oven looking like some small yet terrifying entrance to hell. If I am to use it (and I really don't want to) I need to buy gauntlets.
We have buddies joining us. Two turn up tonight and leave on Monday, one joins us next Saturday for the Fringe! *Waves!*
I have a free ticket for this tomorrow. https://www.festivalofpolitics.scot/events/elect-her
It's only for an hour and a half (though I am very tempted by the other lecture overlapping it; https://www.festivalofpolitics.scot/events/cost-of-living-crisis) I can meet the others in town before/after, which may give me a sense of how the Fringe is shaping up. And now I am fighting my distinct lack of keen re the Holyrood event.
No, it's not a lack of keen; when I look at the programme, there are several bits and pieces I would like to attend, but what's the point of putting it on during the Fringe? It's overwhelming.I also have a meeting this afternoon on account of our local group's event, and suddenly realise I got no sleep last night because of the waiting.
Oh, I am tired.
Why even bother going to the political event? It is pointless, I am not going into politics. In a world where Johnson and Truss are winners, what sane person could bear it? It's dementor land, a game of drones. Of the two most politically adept people I know, one won't touch it (R:'it doesn't pay enough for all the abuse,') and the other is doing well but sees the wall ahead.
I am trying to think of any of my female friends who want the nonsense. Two became involved in Union politics,a couple in local politics, one became a UKip councillor. She was convinced the world was going to end in 2012. After it didn't, she did her best to make it happen by voting for Brexit. I tried to put up with her, because she was a pleasant person and however potty her views, she was never racist or offensive, but when she started retweeting Paul Joseph Watson, I was done.
I know plenty of politically adept women. They care, they really care, but UK politics is a sub circle of Hell right now, and a large chunk of the population continues to vote against its own interests for no reason beyond media induced stupefaction. I truly believe it is going to get worse before it gets better. Sunak, whom I assumed was extraplanar greedy as opposed to the windsock that is Liz Truss, now tries to sweet talk the Tory party by offering this: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/rishi-sunak-tory-leadership-policy-torn-apart_uk_62ea4a54e4b00f4cf235e32e
Nicely vague threats towards removing freedom of speech, just as the right to protest has been severely curtailed by the new policing act that went through in April, all of it an authoritarian's wet dream.The good news is that Sunak's desperate pandering may well go nowhere. But it does leave us with an utterly vacuous mind cosplaying Thatcher up and down Downing Street.
So why go? When the world beyond the lecture walls is full of art and theatre and friends are out there, why learn more about things beyond me to change?
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