Public transport privilege is when you can actually take public transport because you haven’t had a stroke or some other event, as a result of which you’re actually afraid to travel by bus (except for fairly short distances) in case you get motion sickness, which is a common after-effect of stroke, and which obviously cuts down a lot of your possibilities for getting out and about. Basically, almost anywhere I need to go beyond the local shops, I need someone to give me a lift or else I have to go by taxi… which is obviously a far more expensive prospect than bus travel and similarly rules out my going to some places and events purely because a taxi both ways would be far too dear. And then I still have to minimise the motion sickness risk by sitting in the front cos I’m more likely to be ill sitting in back (and even then that doesn’t always work).
Public transport privilege is being able to complain about the person sitting next to you on the bus because at least you can still take the bus. And much as I would no doubt still complain about some of my fellow travellers (and there have been more than a few in my pre-stroke days I’ve hated being stuck in the same sardine tin with), I’d still give a fair bit to know that I actually could go wherever I needed to by bus without having to be afraid that I’d be ill somewhere along the way. To some degree the fear of something happening is probably the bigger problem. I mean, something might not happen. But if it did, you’d then have the double problem of not only being quite unwell but also getting back home again from wherever you were when the sickness hit. Worse things can happen on a bus than having to share a seat, like being travel-sick and having to very carefully hold a plastic bowl full of your own vomit in your lap before you could finally be taken home (and yes, the latter actually happened to me once).
As an aside, the medication I was recommended at the hospital to get rid of the motion sickness actually made it a lot worse. Damned if I did, etc…
No respect for racists. No sympathy. No patience. No understanding. Nothing. They don’t get to deny entire groups of people their humanity and still expect to have their humanity respected.
French activist shoots himself in Notre Dame cathedral in gay marriage protest
I’ll refrain from being totally heartless by suggesting more opponents of gay marriage need to follow Dominique Venner’s example, but it would appear that the world is not poorer for his departure therefrom.
A far-right French historian has shot himself dead at the altar of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in a protest against France’s adoption of same-sex marriage.
Police say Dominique Venner, 78, an essayist and activist linked with France’s far-right and nationalist groups, shot himself in front of worshipers and tourists.
Earlier in the day he had written on his blog about France’s adoption of a “vile law” legalising gay marriage, signed by the French president.
“There will certainly need to be new, spectacular, symbolic gestures to shake off the sleepiness … and re-awaken the memories of our origins,” he wrote.
“We are reaching a time when words must be backed up with acts.”
Venner had been a member of a far right Secret Army organisation which opposed Algerian independence in the early 1960s and attempted to kill the then president Charles De Gaulle. […]
Venner’s publisher, Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, said Venner’s next book due in June was entitled A Western Samurai.
He said the writer’s death had “an extremely strong symbolic power that approximates [Yukio] Mishima,” the radical Japanese author who committed ritual suicide in 1970.
Because if I were a far-right French nationalist trying to remind French people of their French origins, well, nothing says “French” to me like invoking the warrior nobility of Japan…
When I read some of the bullshit Bernard Straightnor insists upon writing, it fills me with joy that I am apparently not a normal man.
Ray Manzarek
To be honest, I kind of outgrew The Doors a long time ago. Can’t remember when I got rid of my Doors CDs, but it was probably the mid to late 90s… mainly cos that’s almost the only time I’ve had something of a purge of my old collection (the only other time I’ve done a comparable cleanout, those Doors albums were already long gone). Offhand, I can’t think of any other significant artist in my collection that I’ve got rid of in the way I did with Jim, Ray, Robbie and John. It’s not like there’s not other artists still in my collection who I don’t have any particular interest in any more, I just haven’t got around to removing them in the way I did The Doors. (I am not exactly good at getting rid of things like this.)
Why ditch them and not those others? I don’t know, but so it’s worked out over the years. At some point I must’ve felt there was something a bit, well, tatty about them after all. Probably Morrison’s “serious poet” pretensions. I’m not sure what’s worse in the end: the way he encouraged so many songwriters over the ensuing decades to treat their lyrics as high poetry, or the way he encouraged so many rock critics to do the same thing…
None of which changes the fact that Ray Manzarek’s death has been hurtful. Cos even when you do grow out of some early artistic love, it doesn’t change the fact that they were important to you once. The important thing about The Doors for me is that they were the first band I was interested in. Before I latched onto them, I didn’t really take music seriously, I’d listen to whatever was on the radio, or whatever was getting played on the music programs on TV (yes, I was a Countdown kid when I was little), and that was it. I never really took an interest otherwise or suspected that there was, in fact, much to be interested in.
Jim, Ray, Robbie and John changed that back in 1990. They were the first band I felt the need to actually own something by and learn about. Thanks to No One Here Gets Out Alive, I first read about Love and The Velvet Underground. It was the start of a voyage of exploration I’m happy to say continues. As for The Doors themselves, a couple of months ago I actually did download the first album again (found someone posting a FLAC transfer of the original mono vinyl edition), listened to it again while writing this, and it actually holds up well for the most part.
And, irrespective of what I may think of the band now (and to be honest I actually have been considering re-investing them for a while), Ray Manzarek was a substantial part of The Doors and consequently of my younger days. A part of my teenage years leaves the world with him.
