work!! There are advantages and disadvantages to shift work, but working a 12 hour shift on a Saturday night into Sunday morning probably tends towards the debit side. Having said that, if I wasn't working, I'd probably be sitting at home drinking too much beer and/or Chilean Chardonnay, so it's at least better for my liver that I'm here, if nothing else!
I'm still musing about putting some of my fiction up on the blog, but my big production number, my novel (the one that everyone is supposed to have in them somewhere) has stalled at the moment, because I think there's a fundamental flaw in the basic premise of its plot, namely that 'people' will accept someone that would normally be vilified if they do something noble and honourable. In reality, 'people' would probably follow the schadenfreude route, and say that the anti-hero got what he deserved. I put the word 'people' in inverted commas because I don't want to deal in sweeping generalisations and tar everyone with the same proverbial brush, but there seems to be a strong tendency towards moral issues being judged in strictly 'black and white' terms nowadays, in the style of knee-jerk tabloid journalism - 'people' seem to be incapable of appreciating the slightest nuance or shade of grey in any argument, something I believe is borne out by the attraction that fundamentalism seems to hold for many, whether it be religious, political, animal rights or whatever, the view that 'I'm right and everyone else is wrong if they don't believe what I believe'. For example, I'm an atheist, and have been since my early teens, but I would never try and convert anyone to my point of view -if someone wishes to believe in God, that, in my opinion, is their business - but I get the feeling that there are many who wouldn't extend the same courtesy to me.
I've mentioned before that one of my inspirations to begin this blog, and a story I'm a big fan of, is 'Twinergy and the Boys of Clear Lake'. In one of the chapters, the young author expounds what I presume is his own optimistic philosophy through one of his characters, namely that tolerance for less conventional lifestyles, in this case homosexuality, will gradually increase with time. My immediate reaction, which I wrote in my notebook (but didn't eventually leave as a comment on the story blog, because I thought it would be perceived as excessively negative) was that I thought that he was being unrealistically idealistic, the more so because he's growing up in the U.S., which is a society that seems to me, as an outside observer, less tolerant of moral 'otherness' than most. I really hope he's right and I'm wrong, that his idealism will trump my cynicism, but I remain to be convinced.
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
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