Dumb Over

A couple of things have occupied my mind in the last day or so. Dumbness has sort of featured in both and now I feel righteously filled with the urge to campaign ... well, enough so, at least, to sound the clarion.

Yesterday afternoon I was wracking my brain for something to write about. I have been far too slack in keeping this blog up to date and part of the reason is my unbounded capacity for laziness and procrastination. It would help if I could only lighten up a bit and wax lyrical about the mundane things of life. But, for the time being, that is a step too daring for me to contemplate.

However if the determination to find a thing is strong enough then finding is pretty much a matter of course. I reached the last day of a course of antibiotics yesterday. I had been prescribed them for an infection around a wisdom tooth that should've been a distant memory but wasn't, mainly for reasons that have more to do with a healthy suspicion of dentistry skills than with cowardice. The drug came as massive dispersible tablets in foil blister-packs of three. At three times per day I had seven days supply. I kept them in the fridge; I cannot think of a good reason why. I just did.

When I removed the final day's supply from the carton I noticed the manufacturer's blurb leaflet laying around sulkily at the base of the box. It seemed as though it was reproaching me for my cavalier disregard of its edifying contents. Useful stuff, no doubt. Golden nuggest of wisdom like: not to be inserted anally and may cause drowsiness, do not fly commercial jet-liners if affected.

Knowing that such printed matter offers rich grounds for one with a sardonic sense of humour, I carefully peeled it open while I waited for my horse pill to disperse into the water. (I had previously marvelled at this dispersing. It definitely did not dissolve. Without a hint of effervescence the things just sort of boiled away into the liquid until the had formed and impenetrable fog around themselves at which point some agitation is required to encourage further dispersing to occur. Being an inveterate worrier of the trivially inane I wondered whether the active ingredients were the finely divided material that formed the main suspension or if -- as I suspected -- the drugs were mostly to be found in the heavier particles that remained stuck to the sides of the glass after all the liquid had been consumed. One fact seems indisputable. There is no anti-paranoia medication in those pills.

With such an involuted degree of concern for materials science -- rather than with the more wordly concerns of a patient who might wish to find out what to do in the event of breaking out all over in hives and itchy rashes -- I was nevertheless ill-prepared for advice at the level of those to be found, allegedly, on the toothpicks supplied by some restaurants.

As most of us know, antibiotics can upset the normal composure of one's bowels. Not to put to fine a point on it, antibiotics can give one the shits. But as the leaflet spelled out the potential disorders of bowel behaviour I noticed, with a savage kind of glee, that the anonymous writer had lapsed into dumbed-down langauage. (It is more likely that the leaflet was co-written by a committee that met dozens of times and had numerous interim consultations with governmental and non-government organisations before arriving at its final draft.)

In the UK the correct medical term for shit has for decades been that old stalwart: stool. But now, it seems, in a farcical attempt to sieze the intellectual high ground while tossing a casual nod towards the ill-educated plebs, that shit is now to be known as: faeces (otherwise known as poo)

I couldn't make it up!

It also doesn't really make much of a blog entry.

And then I got to thinking about dumbing down again later on when I was reading a blog I like a lot. Sharon's Blog has been a must read for me for the last several months. Over those months I have grown to know her and her family; some of her posts have made me weep, sometimes in sadness, others with joy.

Yesterday evening, after my frivolous musings over the naming of poo, I read Sharon's latest entry about her youngest son who has a number of challenging differences ranging from a form of autism to hearing loss. Sharon is having trouble getting her local education system to meet her son's needs. And this isn't right. She lives in the USA, and it seems cruel and senseless that the richest nation on earth can't manage to run an education system with equality and fairness as its byword.

More to the point I find I am now wondering about the whole MMR vaccine debate that has been boiling up a storm here in the UK for several years. The furore has been flaring up here from time to time since it first hit the tabloid's front pages in 1997. Though proof that MMR causes autism remains elusive the taint has led a high percentage of parents to shun the triple vaccine, there being no compulsion to have it.

Thus far, as a parent who submitted all of mine to MMR in the early 1980's, I have tended to come down squarely on the side of the medical and government arguments for MMR. The anti-brigade, to my way of thinking, were simply foolish Luddites who risk the health of their children from the unnecessary dangers of measles as well as the health of the unborn children of their relatives, friends and neighbors through rubella and mumps.

It's a no-brainer. At least ... I thought it was. I am no longer nearly so confident that MMR is safe. I mean it is adminstered to little kids whose moms still sterilise bottles and teats. Huh? I mean seriously ... huh?

At least one search result I found indicates medical researchh in to hearing loss and MMR has been conducted. Below is brief list of the kind of advice to be found on the internet.

• MMR - the fact. UK NHS Website
• CDC NIP. Official US Website
• Spiked Health - Independent Website
• Immunization Studies: Adverse Vaccine Reactions. (Hearing Loss)

So, while I continue to moulder, (and I have no illusions as to how many come here actually to read this erratic conceit that passes for witty journalism) please take a moment to visit with Sharon and maybe leave her a message of support.

Youthful Ambitions

I was in training yesterday afternoon. Not the sweaty and puffing kind of training, it was the cerebral kind. I volunteered recently for a course in recuitment selection procedures. This is not the kind of thing I would normally associate myself with. Especially as it seems mostly to be concerned with the wishy-washy, trendy-lefty political correctness issues of race and gender and disability.

If such a thing as a political minefield could be said to exist then it is alive and well in the tangle of laws that we have to protect minorities of all shapes and sizes and hues from ... [ta-da!] Social Exclusion

Ye Gods! We spent almost an hour trying to define 'social exclusion'! What the hell is the point of coining an expression if no-one can define it? I ventured my opinion that social exclusion was a fancy word for lack of financial resources, that being a fancy way of saying poverty. There were a lot of arguments put forward as to reasons why poverty was just a single factor in "social exclusion", none held water, in my opinion.

A man with no legs and no money is bound to feel exlcuded from society if he is unable to travel wherever he wishes. Give him enough cash, I argued, and he can do anything he wants. Of course that is an empirically glib analysis. If we all had a million Bill Gates would still be rich. Towns and cities would still have nice neighbourhoods and scuzzy ones. Shops would still divide us into classes by taste. Some hanker for oysters and foie gras others are much happier with a bastardised pizza made with chunks of boiled pig and slices and canned pineapple.

The other day I was dragged kicking and screaming to my local mall. It's one of Britain's biggest and it's only a mile from home which are the prime reasons I cite for not having been there in more than 5 years ... not counting occasional visits to the mall's Oort cloud of warehouses such as PC World. I must be the only woman on the planet who can be led through and endless series of clothing shops -- ranging from chique through chic to the execrable "chick" and emerge with wallet unopened. My companion, bless her, seemed mildly to be worried by my thrift ... or else by my fussy hard-to-please-ness; I wasn't sure then and I am not now. Anyway we ended up at the back of a place that specialises in remaindered designer gear and seconds and (frankly) thirds ... or do I mean turds?

I felt that I had surely disconcerted Angela more than enough with my clothing reticence as she fell upon the displays of gewgaws and other kitsch domestic ephemera with the glee of a child in a toy shop so I joined with her in admiring the African carvings and Chinese pottery and rustic (recycled packing-case) furniture.

So there I was, yesterday musing this over, both internally and vocally. We are not equal. We can never be. But still I see there is a great need for anyone who is involved in selecting a person from amongst a number of candidates to be both fair and dispassionate. This is the goal of the equal opportunity programmes. To try to lead us to a point at which we can feel comfortable that we have tried our hardest to leave our own prejudices out of our decision making process.

Afterwards I was waiting at the bus station hoping, without much optimism, for a bus that would actually go past my house. There are two regular services, one goes past my home, the other turns off half a mile before it. Guess which one always comes first? I was joined there by one of my fellow trainees. I toyed with trying to construct a convincing sounding apology for not having waited for him; that I hadn't realised that he used also used the buses and that we could have walked there together (I had in fact walked there with two others who closer to my own age.) Andrew (not his real name) is a much younger man; I can give him 30 years and still have years that amount to more than small change! Slowly it dawned on me that apology wasn't needed. Andrew was young and such things did not matter to him. He joked that rushing to the bus station had only earned me a longer wait. I agreed but countered that at I was at least warmed up. This was only partly true. I had rushed out of the house earlier without scarf or gloves or hat and it was now sub-zero by windchill and my coat is more style than substance.

"Now who's the syle victim?" I thought savagely, mocking my own shopping prejudices of a few days earlier, as I thought about the rack of lovely thick parkas with the remarkably low prices I had so casually shunned.

As we waited, Andrew chatted with the unselfconscious enthusiasm of the young for whom the future is as dark and mysterious and inviting as the Congo and Amazon basins were to early European explorers. Not for him the doubts and worries of mundane things like practicality. No! He had his next ten years all mapped out, from college to VSO to post-graduate doctorate to seat on the board ....

It all sounded so simple. If only life were like that. By then we were on our bus. I had listened quietly and respectfully to his plans. I applauded his enthusiasm without passing opinion. Then he delivered his own coup de grace.

"Or maybe", he said mischeviously. "I'll fall at the first post, drop out and die before I'm 25 of a drugs overdose."

I snorted softly with wry amusement and said something that seemed apt and wise and urbane but was none of those things. What I really wanted to say was something about the wonderful all or nothing approach of the young. But we had reached his stop and I had the seat to myself for the next few minutes before I too had leave the bus's steamy interior go where the PTE's buses only go when I don't want one.

Listening to Cynthia Jordan ... because I like piano and free music is never to be sniffed at.

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