I protest! I want my priceless pazazz back

I protest! I want my pazazz back. It’s not something I have ever taken lightly or for granted, but somewhere inside me I’ve had this little box of it and it has been very nice thank you. I know it’s still there, but it’s little lid doesn’t lift as often as it used. It’s one of those things, like a bird giving a cheeky chirp in the dark. There is no rhyme or reason to it, it’s like magic dust and a little of it goes a long way. But it seems I have this weary blob (caused by age and illness) now, and one of it’s arse cheeks is sitting on the lid of my little box of pazazz.

I had a very odd dream last night, I was running around like a headless chicken looking for my stuff and everywhere I went people were burning it. I woke up and thought that was very appropriate in a world in which all that makes us rich and vibrant is being dumped on by the relentless dismalness of those in power. Life sucking vampires. “Thou shalt be subject to market forces.” “Thou art human resources.” “Thou art stock.” “Thou shalt do thy duty with serious mien and be not frivolous.” “Thou shalt pay.”

Everything is transduced into the economy, even life. Governments don’t manage the economy, quietly, to serve the best interests of all. They use it as a club to beat us with and nothing can be more dismal than to reduce the worth of everything to a monetary value.

Medical care is an essential in life. No human being exists without some need of medical care at some point, not as some privately owned bolt on if you can afford it, or a reward bestowed by our measure of worth and very pointedly and specifically denied to those most in need of it.

Child birth is now a political hot potato, focussed on the unworthiness of poor people to have children.

We are, by nature, kitted out with the abilities to look after ourselves in astonishing detail, opposable thumbs and toes to balance with, to name but two of an astonishing array of inbuilt attributes for survival. Even more wondrous, if that’s possible, is our division into two halves of a reproductive process that is the most primal definition of self, female or male. It’s pretty much the first thing that used to be said, before scanning arrived, at birth, ‘It’s a girl/boy’. Although gender is more complicated today, LGBT+++, in amongst all the confusion, it just tells me that gender is a hugely important, and wonderful, primary issue. As a tranny it is beyond me to fathom the mystery of that, but it’s a primary issue around my sexuality and sexuality is a wonder.

And, no, you Victorian dismal killjoy maniacs, wanking does not make you deaf and women have orgasms too, get over yourselves.

The least we could do, as a species, is to make support in childbirth a human right and not conditional on social status or an ability to pay, which is where the Tories are brutally driving us.

Modern life is a colossal mess in which life is cheapened by issues of worth to the lowest standard possible, money. The rich are exalted and the poor are denigrated, blamed and demonised for their poverty. The poor don’t measure up and are genetic failures, overlooking their historic role of makers and providers of global wealth.

Everything is bass ackwards, in the words of Howard Zinn: “I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth.

“As soon as you say the topic is civil disobedience, you are saying our problem is civil disobedience. That is not our problem…

“Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience…

“Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty.

“Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

So I am angry that my pazazz is being sat on by weariness, just when I want it most as the world is peaking out on bass ackwards stupidity, and it is stupid, way above anything else I can say about it, it’s just plain stupid. There is not a lick of sense in any of it.

Goddammit it all, we are so much better and so much more then this incredible top down imposition of punitive, grasping, dismal stupidity. The Tories are nothing if not a national and global embarrassment to life and living.

KOG. 14 February 2018.