The Last Straw (1)

OK ... I think I'd best explain where the hell that last post came from. Quite an impressive rant if I do say so myself but I think it needs some context. This is my story.

I'll start in December 2000. I could go back to my birth and tell you all about being born with a physically disabled hand and how that really fucked me up right throughout school (and for your information ... being deformed is NOT the fucking same as being ginger or being fat mmmk!). I could also tell you all about the dysfunctional way I was raised but that's way too personal and as bad as I was raised, my folks don't (quite) deserve that. So Yeah ... December 2000 ... the 19th ...

At 6pm my best friend (who thought he was Merlin reincarnated) comes to my door and I let him in to see that he has a rather large longsword in his hands and a maniacal look in his eye. He thinks I'm Mordred and he's there to finish me off for good. Somehow I managed to thwart the sword attack but in the ensuing battle, he breaks a whisky bottle and proceeds to plunge it into the palm of my deformed hand and attempts to gouge off it's remaining digits. At this point I realised that this guy is not the kind of friend I should be with-holding violence from so I responded with extreme prejudice and left him needing 300 stitches. It's only by pure luck (HIS luck) that MY broken bottle somehow evaded his jugular vein, which I was aiming for. I finally manage to hit him over the head and leave him lying there unconscious in a pool of blood while I ran screaming from the house terrified. I later found out that he had been taking Prozac for the last 3 weeks or so but his reasons for doing what he did is academic. He did it and I've had to live with the consequences ever since. Incidentally, for this rather brutal attempted murder he served just 7 months in prison.

So ... I think that it's safe to say that this alone gives me ample reason to be very depressed and emotionally fucked up, wouldn't you? I mean not only have I had to go through life learning how to cope with a deformed hand, this sick fuck makes the whole thing ten times worse and I'm left to try and get used to a new deformity and one that is much more severe than the one I had already learned to live with. I put the picture up of my hand to show how it looks visibly. That index finger (which used to work perfectly well as a thumb after an operation that was performed on it when I was aged 5) is now locked permanently in the position shown. I've also lost about 75% of all feeling and sensation to that side of my hand. I could spend paragraphs telling you all about the resultant nightmares, anxiety, emotional disturbance, hyper-vigilance, sheer anger, self loathing and shame at the things that I wanted to do to that bastard in revenge ... but I'll leave it there. I think you get the idea. It's left me pretty fucked up both mentally and physically.

Now this is how this fits in with the rest of my life at that time. 3 months before the attack I'd chucked in a job working as an administrator for a local small business because I was sick of working my nuts off for peanuts and endless unfulfilled promises of a wage increase. I was on minimum wage and doing about 5 different jobs for them. Accounts, sales, credit control, purchasing, desk top publishing, building a new website, controlling 4 databases of sales and clients etc etc etc. National Sales Director was one of my titles ... pffft! I always give my all to a job. I'm an all or nothing type of guy. Well one day the manager says to me "You have to do more" so I flipped him the finger, told him to fuck off and walked out. As a result the woman I was living with at the time decided that she was going to leave me (it was her first husband that attacked me by the way). I can't go on without saying that she is the only person who I can count on to help me out in times of need. When there's been no-one else, she has been there for me. The results of the attack were hard on her too so I totally understand why she had to leave me.

So anyway, I'd already decided that I would NEVER work my nuts off to make some greedy lazy cunt rich on the back of MY hard labour whilst they pay me peanuts EVER AGAIN. So 3 months after the assault, in an effort to find a place for myself in this world I started a course on Owner Management with a view to starting my own business. Unfortunately, I took this on too soon after the traumatic event and I was unable to complete it due to my precarious state of mind. The woman I was living with finally left because at the time she couldn't cope with my anger which would all come out of me when we had a drink. We used to drink lots. This did not improve my mood. I sank into total depression for 2 years and basically did nothing but play computer games and browse the internet.

In 2003 I decided that I needed to get back on the horse so I went pounding the street. I decided that I wouldn't object to working for a charity so I went in to the offices of the local "area regeneration" scheme and asked if they had anything. It turned out that they were just setting up a furniture recycling scheme and needed someone to kick it off. I got an interview and was given the job there and then. It started at 2 days a week but within several months I had built up the scheme (and my own ability to deal) so that I was doing 4 days a week. Things were looking up. The manager was really cool and she basically left me (and the 3 guys who were also eventually taken on) to ourselves and we went for it. I won't say too much about that here because it's a really good story about how worker run workplaces can function so much better than the traditional boss and hierarchy deal. I'll be covering that in a future post. Anyway, the cool manager left and in her place, nine months later the umbrella organisation took on and appointed two part time managers (yeah I know, don't get me started) who turned out to be self serving political animals with no idea ... about anything. Anyway, I managed to work fairly well with them but over time relations deteriorated. One morning (July 2005 if I recall correctly) just as I and the other guys were walking in through the door (10 minutes before we should have been starting) we were dragged into the furniture showroom and given a nasty and ranty bollocking over something really trivial. I tried to remain calm and politely pointed out the reasons for this oversight only to be given the classic response "I don't want to hear your excuses". So I wigged out and told HER to fuck off too. I complained about this mistreatment to the umbrella organisation but in a breathtaking exercise in self justification, they maintained that it was ME that was in the wrong and they basically sacked me ... for being unwilling to be spoken to like a piece of shit by someone who basically couldn't find their own arsehole with both hands. So much for working for an ethical organisation.

And now recent history. The experience with the furniture recycling scheme laid me pretty low. I'm still not over it and I don't think I ever will be. It would appear that there is nowhere that you can work where you are treated with respect and paid a fair wage for a fair days labour. I've lost all hope in finding a place in this society and I've felt that way for several years. So not only do I have the ongoing depression which I still suffer from the assault (along with the permanent disability which it gave me), I also have to suffer the depression of knowing that I live in a society where I can't find a place to exist with any kind of dignity or honour. I've been on various forms of Incapacity Benefit for the last several years due to my anxiety, stress and depression and my experience within THAT system has made things infinitely worse.

I've gone on here longer than I expected to so I'll leave the whole sad and sorry story about how I've been treated by the DSS and benefit system for the next entry. If you're at all interested in knowing about what happened next I'll (try to) post part two in a few days time ...

Game Over Man ...

In the immortal words of Hudson in the film "Aliens", "That's it! Game over man! Game over!".

I'd just like to inform everyone that I'm officially resigning. From everything. Period.


Why? I'll tell you why! I'm sick to death of trying to convince sheep that the world is run by greedy people who don't give a blue shit about them and only care about money and big business. I'm sick to death of pointing out that governments are insane and immoral and trying to debate people about it. I'm sick of the whole fucking deal. So, as of now, if you think that governments are good, essential or inevitable then just get the fuck away from me. If you like this shit so much then fuck off and wallow in it. Seriously, I have ZERO time for you fucking brain dead arseholes now. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

As for me I've also had it with trying to find an honourable compromise with this system. I now know for a hard fact that it can't be done. So fuck the system too. Here's the news, first chance I get I'm off to join a commune of hippies in the forest. That's right folks, I'm getting the fuck out of here before you arseholes drag me down the shitter with you. You can all carry on taking it up the arse if you like but don't expect me to stand and watch and don't expect me to fight for your freedom anymore.

Fuck you.

Modern Day Newspeak

If George Orwell could hear some of the things that get said today in laughable and pathetic sayings that are supposed to pass as logic then he'd surely be spinning like a top right about now.

In "1984" (a book that all modern western governments seem determined to look upon as an instruction manual rather than as a warning) you may recall that he introduces the concept of "newspeak", a dialectic system of indoctrination used to control and brainwash a population so dumbed down that they would believe such bass-ackwards epithets as "war is peace" or "freedom is slavery" or the wonderful "ignorance is strength". The man was truly a political prophet.

There are three such sayings that are used with alarming regularity in our oh-so-sophisticated society and every time I hear one of them it makes me so fucking angry that it makes my teeth ache! As a (probably far too) vocal evangelical anarchist I hear them all. A lot.


The first one goes like this:

"If you didn't vote then you have no right to complain."

Eh? I feel like spitting bricks just writing that diatribe down. In the tradition of all newspeak this can clearly be shown to be the polar opposite of what any rational person might call logical. Anybody that has two functioning brain cells and a spare five minutes should be able to deconstruct the above nonsense with relative ease. Trust me on this, if any of you ever meet me and try to use this argument then I will tell you in no uncertain terms that you are a dolt. If you voted (particularly if you voted for the winning horse) then in all truth YOU put the offending party in power and thus it is YOU that has no right to complain! QED.

- o - o - o -

Another one that gets bandied about with regard to voting is the following gem;

"It's your duty to vote because people have died to secure your right to do so."

Pure unadulterated bullshit! People died for my freedom and that freedom should allow me to either choose to vote or not, as I see fit. If you're guilty of using this basically fascist argument then in the name of all that's rational ... please stop it! It's rather embarrassing. For you.

- o - o - o -

This third one is quite the jewel in the crown of truth perversion;

"If you don't have a solution then you have no right to be talking about the problem."

As an anarchist I get this one thrown at me all the time and damn it's frustrating (for one because I believe that I bloody well DO have some answers and yet hardly anyone has the bollocks to accept them). People who glibly trot out this sort of verbal garbage can surely only be described as intellectually weak cowards. Should we stop talking about cancer just because we haven't got a cure? Do these people not realise that the only way to provide a solution to any given problem is to first identify said problem as accurately and as comprehensively as possible? Do they not understand that this process can not take place by "shutting up about it" and that in fact it usually requires quite a lot of in-depth discussion and debate? Grrrr ... I'm starting to foam at the mouth now I'm so enraged. >o/

- o - o - o -

So as you can see, I can gloomily report that Orwellian "newspeak" is alive and well thank you very much and residing happily in the numbed minds of the intellectually stunted. I hope that I have convinced at least you, dear reader, to never be tempted to use them in the future. And if you do, you should know that you should NEVER use them in front of me!

Shape of Things to Come

As hinted at in my last entry, here at last is an ever growing list of some of the things I intend to cover in future posts. There will, of course, also be random stuff that just comes to mind but at some point I will be tackling all of the topics below. I'll mark them with an X as I cover them.

• Science v Spirituality. An ongoing series in which I have a few more things to add.
• Democracy? Inspired by a series of videos on YouTube by Buddhagem I'd like to give my perspective on what true democracy entails.
• Rights. Is there such a thing as "rights" without the state?
• State benefits and taxation.
• X If you don't have a solution then stop talking about the problem. Is that reasonable?
• New World Order conspiracy theories. A harmful distraction.
• A critique of the "Freeman on the Land" movement.
• Human nature or human behaviour?
• Do anarchists "educate" effectively?
• Mental health and the benefit system.
• A personal story of anarchy in action.
• Does anarchism equate to utopian idealism?

Nothing too serious then ... mwahahaha!

I've no idea in what order I'm going to attempt to cover these subjects but I will get round to them all eventually [/plan A]. If anybody reading this blog has any points to make on any of the above topics, or if you'd like me to cover something else not on the list, then please feel free to have a say by using the comments feature.

Peace.